When I Grow Up, I Want to Be...

(Warning: This blog post contains occasional rambling and a few off topic paragraphs)

I am still reading Scarlet Fever by Maureen Johnson. The book is about a girl named Scarlet whose family owns a small, and failing, hotel in New York City. The main character’s older sister, Lola, is out of high school but “taking a break” before college to help out at the hotel. This is what she is saying anyway. In reality, their family doesn’t have the money to send Lola to college right now, and Lola didn’t even apply. On top of this, Lola has absolutely no idea what she wants to do with her life. She doesn’t see her self as good at anything and there is nothing she is passionate about. Mean while Scarlet’s older brother, Spencer, knows exactly what he is doing. Spencer wants to be an actor and *****SPOILER ALERT******thanks to his new recurring role in the TV show “Crime and Punishment” he is actually making money doing this. Scarlet is in high school and the family’s youngest child, Marlene, is only ten. This leaves Lola feeling lost and alone.

            The situation Lola is in made me think a lot about what I want to do with my life.  In all honesty, I have almost no idea, but I don’t see why I should need to know right now. I’m thirteen and my interests are still changing and evolving. Lola shouldn’t have to make a decision like that as an eighteen year old either. If I were to walk up to a person and ask them if I need to know what I want to be when I grow up right now, they would probably say no. At the same time however, we are expected to make these choices. Just this year we had to decide if we wanted to go to a performing arts school or one of the science schools or the school for fashion design ect. We had to choose whether to go to the performing arts middle school or the math and science one.

Once we were in this school, we had to pick a talent and stick with only that one for three years. I love being in photography. At the same time, I do participate in other things outside of school, because while I love photography, I have other interests. I had to go and search out ways to do these things, but that is not something everyone is able to do. It would have been nice to be able to participate in things like drama in school. I admit that being in photography for three years really helped me develop my skills in a way otherwise impossible. But if we had had the opportunity to try other talents in school, then I could pursue the ones I liked further, and reach the same level I am at in photography, while also finding out what I like and don’t like.

As I keep thinking about this, I am starting to wonder what the purpose of making kids make all of these choices is. I don’t really understand. If we make decisions too early, then they are more likely to be decisions we regret. I don’t see any use in that. I started to think about dancers, who often train from when they are as little as three. They do it because if you start young, then you have an advantage over people who started when they were older. The same principle applies to this. In theory, if you start focusing on something earlier, then you have an advantage over people who started later. Then soon, everyone is starting earlier and earlier and earlier, always trying to get an edge. At what point do we stop and say, “How the heck do we know if a four year old is ‘Gifted and Talented’?” Because in all honesty, the average fifth grader doesn’t know what they want to be when they grow up, and they shouldn’t have to.