Seize Each Day Say What?
After a while, waking up at 5:55 every morning takes a toll on a person. Many a day, as I stand in the shower waiting for sleep to slough off with yesterday�s hair products, I wonder �Why on earth am I doing this?! I must be mad.�
Truancy policy aside, students are constantly being told that schooling is the way to success, the way to get where one thinks one wants to be.
OK, I can deal with that. Obviously, if I want to go into, say, genetic engineering, I�ll need background in the field. And to be prepared for developing said background I will need to jump through hoops of prerequisites. But what if I get there and say �Hey, I really wanted to be a journalist, instead�? There goes a fraction of my young life down the drain.
We students are also told to �live your dreams� and �live each day as if it were your last.� Now I don�t know about anyone else, but waking up at 5:55 is not my choice way of starting the last day of my life, unless it were the prerequisite for a flight to some exotic locale like India or Spain.
The truth is, as I get closer to my senior year of high school and closer to choosing a college and a career, I�m beginning to wonder if the idea that life will be better after high school will become a reality or if it is just the wishful speculations of a teenage romantic tired of bells and alarms.
Despite the fact that everyone is supposed to go into a career perfect for their talents and interests, it seems that everyone�s looking forward to vacation and snow days and weekends more than going back to work or school. The anticipation of another routine day strikes dread into the heart of many � at least in the Gumerman household, Sunday evenings are often spent brooding over the prospect of a Monday, and bemoaning too short a weekend.
I know that I would love to spend my weekends writing and working on my miniatures, but instead I do the same thing I do every other day of the week: play computer games, update my website, and wait for my boyfriend to get online. While I do this I watch my life dash up, swat me gently in the face, and rush past -- I wonder if I�ll ever catch up with it.
Sometimes I think that perhaps it would be better to just throw in my cards and cash in my chips and become a hobo � I�d get to see lots of places, there�d be no alarms and bells to live my life by. Is it worth it to go to school for seven hours and do homework and be involved in extracurriculars to prepare myself for college? Then go to college for four years and graduate? Then get myself a nice 8-5 job and a not-so-swank apartment in a big city somewhere? Will I be happy? Or would it be better to take some time off life and start working on that million-dollar novel that my dad keeps telling me to write?
At the same time, however, I like my life. I like having classes that allow me to think. I like putting my body through rigorous torture and learning choreography for the high school show choir Findlay First Edition. I like wasting time on the computer until my boyfriend gets online so I can talk to him. Even if I had the opportunity to change to the life I want, would I? Would I even want it, in the end?
I look at my mom, who was valedictorian of her high school class and worked as a dietician for a while. Now she�s a photography enthusiast and an at-home mother attempting to make the perfect chocolate chip cookie. All the time in the world � or so it seems -- to embrace her passions. No bedtime! No alarm clock screeching �Get up now or thou art doomed!�
It sounds boring. So I guess I�m stuck with the prospect of working for wages and waiting for weekends, hoping for something better � in the true American tradition. Now back to calculating the sine of 30 degrees and looking up �la colina� and pondering what the basic features of the 1872 Mining Law were! Because 5:55 on Monday morning is going to come all too soon.