“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

From an early age, children are asked this question and expected to know what they want to be. Now that students are in high school the pressure to know what they want to do in the future is amplified. People make it seem like teens are supposed to have a good idea of their interests and where they want to go in life, but it’s normal to not know who you are or who you are going to be.

Many people have probably heard the term “midlife crisis” which is an emotional crisis of identity that occurs in middle age. However, teens go through this too, as they are going through many changes and trying to plan out goals for the next stage in their life. Not everyone knows exactly who they are or what they want to be, and this feeling of discontent is often not discussed with teens.

Erik Erikson, a German psychologist, defined eight crisis stages that occur in our lives from birth to death. The fifth stage, Identity vs Role Confusion, occurs in an adolescence when they are transitioning from childhood to adulthood. During the stage, teens examine their personal identity along and learn the roles they will occupy as an adult.

For some, the search for one’s identity can have a more prominent role in their life than others. I have often found myself wondering who I am and what purpose I serve. It’s normal for people to have thoughts like this, but I found it consuming my life. I was obsessed with trying to do all these things that I thought would help me discover who I was and it made me really unhappy. I felt like everyone around me had already started the next chapter in their lives, and because I couldn’t find myself I felt like I wasn’t going anywhere.

There’s no immediate solution to an identity crisis. Flipping a switch and then automatically knowing who you are just isn’t possible. But feeling like this is completely normal. It is normal to not have everything figured out yet. It is normal for students to not know who they are or want they want to be. They shouldn’t be branded as negligent or impotent for not having everything figured out, because all of this is a part of growing up.

Sincerely,

Sydney