Being a high schooler isn’t that easy! We are in the age between childhood and adulthood - we are still young and docile, but then you are having to care about our future and our career: what college are you going to, what major are you enrolling in, where will you get married, etc. Just a ton of questions poured into our head, yet again, at this age our brains haven’t been “set” yet, meaning that we are certainly still confused about our lives and their decisions. And of course, I get it myself - for me, high school should be a time for exploration of our interests, where they are our majors, our future careers, as well as our love interests. Therefore, I would like to devote this post in order to help you out with this very hard thing - of actually thinking about the future instead of ignoring it later on - remember, high school is going to fly by quickly, and then after all, you are all on your own! I hope that through this post with the advice that I want to share, the future path, wherever it is for you, will be hopefully a bit clearer.
The first thing you should do when you start thinking of your future is to ask yourself: what do you envision yourself to be as a person ten years from now. Ten years may be a very far thing ahead, but without realizing what you want to become as a person, we won’t be able to think of our future seriously. Now, lay back a little bit, close your eyes, and think about what you will become as a person ten years from now. That can be anything: where do you want to live, what job do you want to pursue, do you want to get married then, are you staying in the city or living somewhere in the countryside, etc. You don’t have to create a very “connected” picture by now: just let your thoughts say for itself - pour everything out! I am going to give you 15 minutes to think about this.
There is something that my class did once earlier on this year, which for me was a very helpful thing when guiding yourself through the process of thinking about your future. I don’t know where my school is taking inspiration from when creating this activity, but I think this is very helpful and will aid you a lot when thinking of yourself as a person in the future. First of all, grab a piece of A4 paper (it will be better if that paper is clean and has not signs of damage, since later on we will hang it on the wall, hence you may want it to be something beautiful and worthy of being hung on the wall), and lay it the way so that the long sides are on top and on the bottom, while the two shorter sides are on the left and right side of you. Next, fold the paper from either left to right or right to left, so that you will get two equal-sized pieces of A5 papers. Next, grab a pencil and colors, because we are going to do some drawings! For the left “small piece of paper”, dump every thought that you just had earlier on onto that left side! Personally, I like it more when you just draw a collage of different things that you want to do - for example, in my work, I draw cupcakes on one part of the section and the stock market on the other part, as well as other things. Alternatively, you can do something like what my teacher did: do a painting of you in 10 years - by that, I mean draw a house, draw your partner (if applicable), draw the job you are doing, and other details that can express what you are having on your mind. I am going to let you have around 15 minutes to finish this task.
Finished with this part? Alright, so now, for the other section of the page, separate it into 2 equal parts, one on top and one below, and please grab a pen because we are going to do some writing now. For the half of top (that should be equivalent to an A6 piece of paper), please write in that box the things you have to do in order to achieve the things that you have envisioned on the left-side section: you can write a paragraph, but preferably I would say that you should write them in bullet points - it is easier to look that way. Try to list out at least 5 things you can do to get to that goal: you can do each thing for each goal, or you can merge them together and write something like “getting into a good college”. Please think thoroughly and spend around 15 minutes on this task.
And finally, we come to the part where we haven’t filled in yet. In this section, again, either in a paragraph or bullet points (again, I prefer bullet points), list out challenges that are constraining you from achieving these goals. They can be something like “not getting into top colleges” or, basically, “procrastination”. Again, try to list out at least 5 points - remember, the more details you are adding here, the more helpful this sheet of paper is when you are looking at them in the future!
The last thing that you should do is to hang this piece of paper somewhere that you can easily see. Whereas we don’t have to decide on everything we will be now - we will make adjustments as the years go on - to be able to read this will hopefully give you a clear picture of what kind of a person you will become in the next 5 or 10 years! You don’t have to be too realistic with this piece of paper though - let your dreams wander, but the most important thing is to try, as a person, to achieve these goals: that is the most important thing to learn from by making this thing!
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