What to Do?

When you were younger, or if you're currently a teenager, did you ever think to yourself, "What am I going to do with my life? What am I going to make out of it? Who am I going to influence? What kind of person will I be? Where will I be?" Well, these questions have been streaming through my head for the last couple days and it's mostly about my future and, yes, college. This school year is almost over and then I'll only be faced with two more years until graduation. And then I'll have to start making the ultimate decisions that will change my life and my fate. What college will I go to, if any at all? What will I major in? And especially what occupation am I going to be working for in the future? These are questions that I want to get ready now, so I can wrap up the answers and start heading that way in my later high school years. At this point in time, things aren't looking too good. I have no extracurricular activities that I participate in at school, no clubs (well, my school only has about three clubs), and no work experience or community service hours. All those factors are going to be screwing me over when it comes to applying for colleges. My father was just talking to me and he's encouraging me to do this thing that I was invited to do by the guidance department, but I'm still doubting any of it. The thing is: I have no self-confidence, and he just told me that and I fully agree. Carol even told me that on AIM today, and yet again I agree.

I'm debating whether to go with my original goal of becoming a computer science teacher and then work my way up to a principal position, or go to college to major in various computer programming languages and work for some game company, such as Jagex. Yes, that would probably be a hard job position to get, but God would it be a dream come true. Now I have to look and the positives and negatives from a standpoint where no research was done. Would I be happy as a teacher? Maybe the first five years, but then I would probably start going insane like 93% of the teachers that are in my school. Plus you do a lot of work for little pay, and I can't work well with kids -- hence why high school teacher was my best pick. Now for a gaming company like Jagex, I may be happier. They get around seven million or more a month, so the employees should get well-paid. You may program your heart away, trying to meet the demands of a weekly update and striving for grand teamwork, but when you have a crowd following you in-game awing at your supernatural mod abilities as you test some new feature on a public server, it's well worth it. I would be 'Mod Buddy Foote'. Yes, a true that will hopefully one day become true. But maybe something else in the future will come up that I'll want to jump into. The bad things about both of my career choices is that I may be jobless fresh out of college for a while. Ever hear of a substitute teacher? Yea, they're mostly a teacher without a permanent job in case you didn't know. I would hate to wake up every morning wondering if the school is going to call me to come in to work. My days would be totally unpredictable, I would be filling in for another teacher which I always thought would be awkward, and I wouldn't be able to create any plans on the weekdays. And for programming, you'll have to search around for a company to find you. Would Jagex accept me? I highly doubt it. They seem like they have only around a hundred employees, even with the growing population of players, and most of those employees seem to be customer support.

Well, I'm off to have a root bear float with ice cream. Have a good one.