You are the Change

I spent most of my academic days trying to figure it out. The situation of self and the realization of “having career opportunities” with qualifications. I am not going to lie to a teenager like most educators trying hard to keep a facade, Schooling does not necessarily make you who you want to become.

In school, I tried many courses they offered. I tried a bit of information technology, elective mathematics and creative writing. For all the years, I even tried a lot of history courses. Of all the years and hours spent at home and at school beat myself over the head with homework I learned very little which is relevant. Of all all the things I learned, I know for certain is algebra is only thing which has solid applications as a course. Everything else is a basis on opinion and extrapolation. Essay writing can help build an organized opinion. History helped with developing critical thinking. Of all the English classes, I can say I can write and describe experience in words. History (aside knowing the United States had a very bloody past) has given me an opinion about and idea of where I live and what it means to be here. The end goal regardless whatever the course was a grade; hopefully a passing grade.

Though I am not a success story, I still have much to learn but there is what I know for sure. Of all the things I’ve learned, none of that matters to what I do. No one really wants me to write essays or do a lot of calculations. Getting out of school, it seems most work places just require you to follow instructions and maximize productivity within the position you are hired. “Able to follow instructions, verbally and visually” is the primary concern for employers. You start lower than what you know. Kind of depressing when every expectation of you is surmised into a sentence as seen from an employer.

Don’t be discouraged, we all started somewhere. We never become what we want, it’s the matter of determination and commitment to where we want to end up. It’s not just taking the education of where you want to go but what you do as a career. You will realize you will start on the very bottom where your career will seem irrelevant and you will have to build your way up. Sure you can be an academic, but most of the work comes from actual experience of both in and our of the career. The end goal in never really the what you wanted but how you have experienced everything.

Isn’t the trip only as good as the journey?

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Growing Up or Growing In

Probably my age wouldn’t amount much advice when you ask me how mature is adulthood. Every adult will tell you to act your age; whether you are an adult or not. After just half a decade of “adulthood”, nothing has really changed.

In high school, we all discover new things while carrying our experiences in childhood. We meet new people, discover new things and make bigger decisions. Over time, we just learn the ways of the world and suddenly we realize life isn’t much rainbows and sunshine. Strange thing about teenagehood and adulthood is it’s much of the same, but post-puberty. That’s the secret, there isn’t nothing special about being a 20-something or 30-something. As much as people say at a certain age you start going downhill, it’s true everything gradually closes off to you as you get older but you will learn to get over it. In many ways the high school years only teaches you one thing, how to deal with regret in a humane fashion.

After a decade since being in the middle of pubescent period of my life, I come to the point where I am still discovering a bit of myself. After coming out as a young adult, it seems much around me stayed the same. However the interesting thing is I am still changing, I wasn’t the same person I was 6 months ago. I am always learning new things on my own and exploring new concepts and ideas. As everything and everyone tells me to grow up and “act your age”, there are so many contradictions in everyone and everything as well.

Creams and serums to make you look young and enhancements to make you feel just as young as you were when you were a teen. Yet fleeting as youth may be to some, I consider youth to be as constant as the wind. The wind just blows and will continue to blow as long as there is something to make it blow. Youth, you have to truly feel young at heart to be young at heart. In that sense, age is different to the sense of youthfulness. We can count the days like we count the stars; like both, there is no point if you are not in the moments you want to enjoy.

Growing up, doesn’t mean to be more mature and to be uptight with a stick up your butt all the time. Growing up is perhaps a cycle of finding joy in life in all the chaos and sadness life can bring. It’s perhaps not an evolution of yourself, but innovation of yourself. Keeping what you are to what you want to do next regardless of the mistakes we will make. It’s how we learn; from our failures and misdeeds.

“Up” is perhaps not the right way to describe it.