An Assortment of Essays

Looming Presence

Ever since I was little, I've been constantly changing about what I want to be when grow up. Like when I was in kindergarten, when I still believed in mermaids, I wanted to be a mermaid. At this point in my life that's still want I want to be, luring sailors to their deaths, chilling out with seals, not a single care in the world. That idea definitely beats tons of student debts, and crippling anxiety about our own mortality running by just to make money that never really means anything.
Now I'm sitting here on a computer frantically typing away to make sure I get an A on a paper so I won't fail a class, or get a lower grade, just so I can live a life that I've been told is good for me but I don't truly know if it is. Yes, I'm a sophomore in highschool and shouldn't worry about stuff like this, but I still do, I wanna make sure everything works out alright. I want to know that my future is secure by society's standards, but at the same time I want to live a life where I love my job and not have to worry about student loans and other debut.
Most people think I have a plan for the future, others think I'm dreaming and need to rethink everything. As of now my plan is to go to somewhere near here, not a community college, and double major in accounting and psychology, so when I'm working on getting my phd for psychology, I can have a real job to help pay off mountains of debt. I told my mom this, she thinks I need to go to a community college since it's cheaper, but I've told her that I want the full college experience. But lately I've been thinking about it more, and with every person that tells me that I should, makes me want to go to a community college more but I still want to have the full perks of a regular college. I haven't talked to many of my friends about it since whenever I start talking about college and the future, I end up having an anxiety attack about it, but I've talked about it to one of my best friends. She was already in college, and had gotten a full scholarship, so we sat for a couple hours and talked about it, and it ended up with me bawling, and it was something like this.
"What if I drop out of college like both of my parents and end up being a nurse like my mom. I don't want that," I told her.
"You won't you're nothing like your mom, you are going to make it. I know you can," she replied.
"But what if I don't. What if I fail all my finals and get kicked out, what if I can't afford it, what if I end up not being able to find a job, what if I'm not able to pay back all my debt," at this point was when I started crying.
"Alexis. You will, just like I've been telling you this whole time. Just because Casey thinks that you aren't something special that colleges won't want, doesn't mean that colleges won't want you. You are 5th in your class, plus you do a lot of extra curriculars, why wouldn't a college want you?"
"Because I'm not the best. And I never get recognized for my hard work, Annah will always be better than me at everything and her shadow will always cover me up. She will always get all the awards not matter what, and she will always get special treat from Marchese and Rotchford, and she will always be better than me and there's nothing I can do about it."
"What does Annah have that you don't?"
"She's smarter than me, prettier than me, funnier than me, nicer than me, has more talent than I do, nicer than me, she's just better than me, and even my family thinks so."
"So what if she is, and she's not. Colleges also pick people because of the carriers they want, Annah wants to go into music, and that's what everyone's doing now, when was the last time you heard someone say they want to be an accountant?"
"Yeah, I guess."
Who knows, maybe I'm over thinking it and things will get easier, or maybe I haven't even the slightest grasp on how hard it is to be an adult in the real world. But all I know now is that for now I'm allowed to have fun and not completely have an exact idea of my future control my life, since I am only a sophomore in highschool.