In our generation, one of the worries we have about the future is how well we do financially. We don’t want to rely on others to help us get by or settle with living on minimum wage–we want to follow our passions while also living comfortably. However, that’s kind of hard for a multitude of reasons: the expectations that our parents or guardians have for us, the cost of higher education, the cost of housing, whether or not we’ll be able to get find a stable position in the field that we spent years studying about and training for, and so on.

When I was younger, I wanted to be a firefighter or a librarian, but my family told me no because they didn’t make a good living. Despite this, they repeatedly stressed how important it was for me to find a job I’d be happy in, but would also have a sufficient salary. They’d recommend things like a lawyer, an accountant, or a nurse. And for a while, I thought they were right–I wasn’t that interested in the medical field, but I was interested in animals, so I figured that being a veterinarian would be perfect. Soon I realized, after getting some firsthand experience, that it just wasn’t the job for me. But I felt obligated to go into the field that my everyone else wanted me to do, instead of looking inside myself and asking “What do I want to do?”

We hear it all the time that we don’t have to go to college, but in a city like Frisco, where we have to plan for our future and are not-so-subtly pressured to figure out what we want to do in life. Us students know that all our family and teachers want us to do is to succeed, but with that effort brings pressure on us.

We aren’t told very often that it’s okay if you don’t know what you’re majoring in or what college you want to go to. In fact, from my experience in Frisco, people look at you strangely when you don’t know the specifics about what you want to do; I want to work with computers, but when people ask me what I’m going to major in and what my minor would be and I respond with “I don’t know”, people are taken back, like they can’t believe how I go to a Frisco school yet I’ve got no clue about what my future holds.

It’s OK if you take a few years to decide what you want to do. It’s OK if you change your mind about your aspirations. It’s okay to not know what lies ahead because nobody really does. You can wait it out and go wherever, or you can plan out the potential possibilities–it’s up to you, and you’re the only one who can decide what you want in life.