I am a 7th grader and I never myself start conversations with people. Especially if I’m conversing with adults, since I’m in the 7th grade, there are not many things adults can talk to me about either.
They always ask me one question, which I absolutely hate. Here is the question.
“What is your goal?”
It’s not that I don’t have any aims or goals in my life, but I can’t say that I have this or that dream to be either.
I want to do something extraordinary but I don’t know what.
I want to make my country a better place but I don’t want to be a politician. I want to help people medically but I don’t want to be a doctor. I want to entertain people but I don’t want to be a comedian. I’m clearly unclear about what I want to do in the future.
Honestly, adults make it more confusing. My parents tell me to chillax and that I’m too young to decide my future. They never pressured me and I’m grateful for that.
On the other hand, my teachers say that they see greatness in me and that the world should see that greatness. They encouraged me and I’m grateful for that too.
Both my parents and teachers sound logical.
So I sometimes think that I must have a slight idea of what I’m going to do in the future. I knew I wanted to be successful in whatever I did.
“How do I decide my career goal?” I looked this question up in Google. Well, Google was no different. Google sounded like every other adult that I had ever met in my life. I opened every website, watched every video, and read every news article.
Everything I saw and read was said and written in very different ways, but they all had one standard piece of advice. “Just do something beneficial and something that you would enjoy.”
All of that research felt productive, but I still didn’t know my aim at the end of the day.
At some point, I realized that being a doctor was a perfect option. Doctors help people and they endure a lot of social and professional respect!
I thought that I could be a doctor, but soon after we went to a pharmacy to buy some medicines and I saw all the hundreds of bottles of drugs and all of them have different uses, side effects and all of them are so different than every other. AND THE PHARMACIST HAS TO MEMORIZE ALL OF THAT!
I gasped at the thought of how many more things a doctor has to remember. Not to mention, doctors and medical workers have to give up sleep and festivals and family gatherings to treat people. Doctors have to see people literally dying every single day.
“Okay, maybe being a doctor isn’t a good idea,” I thought to myself.
A few days later, I found out that animating is a job. I didn’t know that real animators existed. I have always loved drawing and I love animated movies too, so why not become an animator? Animators are somewhat rare in my country, and the whole world loves watching animated movies.
So I downloaded an animating app for beginners, watched a few videos on animate, and started animating. I had picked the most basic animation for the beginner.
It had already been more than 30 minutes and I had only animated 0.5 seconds worth of animation. Even though I was sitting and moving nothing but my hands and fingers, I was exhausted. My eyes felt like they were about to fall off and I could barely move my hands. My jaws dropped at the thought that animators have to experience this feeling every day and have to do more complicated and time-consuming animations.
Animating is so much more challenging than was expected. I guess I was not meant to be an animator.
One time, our teachers separated us into groups for a group project and every group had one leader. I was the leader of my group. I thought this was the perfect time to see if I was worthy of becoming a politician. Like the politicians control the nation, I was going to manage my group!
That was just one of my many failures because the group was going out of control. We completed the group project, to say the least. I learned something from this whole experience, though. All jobs/professions are equally respectable and challenging.
At this point, I was hopeless. However, I saw something which inspired me again. A very wise-looking person advised young people to do what they’re supposed to do and enjoy every moment of youth.
Since I’m a student, am I supposed to study more? That made sense to me, so I started to fulfill my responsibilities as a student. Honestly, some of them are extremely tiring and boring. I get motivated and inspired very fast by everything, so I get new energy to do more things every once in a while. I started enjoying everything as well.
After a few months, I completely forgot about the trauma I had about finding my career goal. I had no big worries.
One day, I met one of my friends who I hadn’t met for months. We were delighted to meet each other. We talked for a while and everything was perfect. Everything was perfect until she asked me, “So, what do you want to be in the future?”
“Oh no! I want to be your friend in the future too!”