Time to Change Things Up a Bit

I think I tried too hard when I started this blog and I ran out of steam very quickly. It wasn't from a lack of things to write about, simply a frustration with the drama that I could have written about. Simply put, stupid people shouldn't breed. Kids make mistakes. That's fine. That I can deal with. What I can't stand is parents who refuse to admit that their kid may have been at fault or that they were anything less than model parents. It's always someone else’s fault, remember? But I digress....

Today's entry is about planning for the future. What makes it so difficult to decide what you want to do with your life? It was simple when we were kids. We could be whatever we wanted to be. Then as we got older, we seemed to have more people putting limitations on what we should be. Ah, the age old question...what we want to do vs. what we should do. Then it always comes back around to what our parents want us to be. This is as difficult a situation to be in for parents as it is to be in for kids. On one side you have the parent who wants to see their child be successful (i.e. rich) and happy (i.e. rich). On the other side you have the kid who wants to be successful (i.e. be good at it) and happy (i.e. enjoy it). Ok, so I may be exaggerating a bit on the side of the parents. It's not like they want you to be a millionaire so they can move into your big house and live off your income for a change. They just want you to make enough money so that they aren't having to pay for your bankruptcy attorney in a few years. Neither side is all right or all wrong. For instance, lots of kids would love to spend their entire lives doing nothing. They could be very successful at doing nothing and who's not happy being able to do whatever they want? That's where parents come in handy. If nothing else, they can nag you until you do something just so they'll leave you alone.

The problem lies in the fact that I really don't think that most kids want to be slugs. Happiness aside, they too would like to make enough money to pay their bills. Face it, from the first day we started working we realized the correlation between our paycheck and gas in our cars. These days, we're working just so we can put gas in our cars. Where parents are failing is in being facilitators. Whether you want your kids to be doctors is not the point, it's whether your kids want to be doctors. You can pay for the fancy college all day long, but if they don't enjoy it then they aren't going to make it through. Motivation is a key factor in success. Before a kid even needs to decide where they're going to go to school and what they're going to major in, they need to be asked what they want to do. They may not know. I didn't know. I knew I liked math, but aside from teaching I didn't know what may career options were. It wasn't until my senior year of college that a professor told me that I should go into actuary science. But by that point I was only a semester away from my BS in Business. Guess what, I didn't go back to college for actuary science. I probably never will. I was lucky to survive one bachelors degree and I'll be paying on it until my kids are in college. Maybe it wasn't meant to be. If I had gone that route from the beginning, then a lot of the good experiences that I've had in my life wouldn't have happened. I probably wouldn't have met my husband. But I still would have liked to have had the choice. But do I blame my parents or my math teacher for not guiding me down that path? Do I blame myself for not asking the right questions? In high school, I didn't even know what actuary science was or where I could go to school for it. Was actuary science even my only option? I'm finding out now that there are a lot of things that I enjoy, that involve math, and I could have gone to school for.

Really, it was no one person's fault. The adults in my life didn't listen when I told them what I wanted to do. Then to make matters worse they didn't listen when I told them where I wanted to go to school. I was told that I had to go to a liberal arts college. Trade schools weren't "real schools." There went my dreams of being a pastry chef. I spent a couple years selling my wares at farmers markets and then my cooking for profit days were pretty much spent. Time to get a "real job." That's what really gets me. I let my parents control my life well into my adult years. And then I see it happen to countless other young adults. Parents are manipulative. They threaten to take your car or kick you out of the house if you don't do as they say. And with those threats they have power over us. But guess what, YOU choose if you let them have power over you. Yep, it's all your fault. You could buy your own car and move into your own apartment. If you're going to college, you could move onto campus. No, it's certainly not as affordable as living at home, but look at what that is costing you. Despite what parents like to believe, there are a lot of people out there who graduated from trade schools and are making more money than their peers who graduated from college. Why? Because they took charge of their lives. Oh, yes, there are also a lot of trade school grads working at McDonald's, but I bet you'd find a few college grads there as well. Book learning is not for everyone. A good portion of Americans are artistic thinkers. They appear messy, are often labeled ADD, and are the most brilliant minds I know. They learn by doing things hands on. Give them a book and they can't focus for five minutes. Give them a Rubik cube and they have it solved in five seconds. Get away from this mentality that all higher learning must be done at a liberal arts school. I am all for higher education. If you want to be successful, then you have to dedicate your entire life to learning. But not all learning comes from books.

Decide what YOU want to do with your life. Find someone who is in that profession and ask them how they would recommend you get there. Then do it. There will be struggles and opposition, but in the end you will be successful and happy.