"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Since we were old enough to speak, there has always been one question that has been constantly asked. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" When we are little, this is just an innocent question that is asked purely for entertainment purposes. (One time my cousin told me he wanted to be a chicken nugget) But as we grow up, this question makes most of us cringe.  The thought of the future scares most teenagers.

I think it's unfair that we need to decide what we wanna do for the rest of our lives at the age of 15 - 16, when we are picking our subjects for senior years. I hardly knew what I wanted for breakfast last year let alone what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Lucky, I figured out what I want to do, but it was after an entire year of feeling extremely pressured and freaked out. My careers adviser was absolutely zero help, my parents just wanted the best for me and wanted me to be financially stable, but they were pointing me in directions of jobs I had no interest in at all, and If I were to purse one of those options, I would have been financially stable, but I would not have been happy.

After a long year of stress and anxiety and pressure (that I put on myself), one day I just gave up. I figured if I didn't know yet then I hadn't found anything I was passionate about, and I told myself that was okay. I stopped putting pressure on myself and just focused on finding what I was passionate about. When I did that, I realised that I loved writing, I loved figuring things out and connecting the dots, I loved telling stories, and I hated dishonesty and people covering up the truth. So, Journalism was the clear pick for me.

My advice to you is to think about what job will make YOU happy, stop putting so much pressure on yourself trying to please everyone else. At the end of the day it's your life and you are the one who is going to be walking into work every morning. If you don't know what you want to do, have a think about what you are passionate about and see if you can turn that into a job. Think about the subjects that you enjoy at school and why you like them. (I like english because I love analysing texts and I love history because I love piecing together the sources and looking at the bigger picture)

Whatever career you pick, being lazy won't get you anywhere. If you want to be successful you need to set goals, work hard and be extremely passionate about the work you are doing. If you follow your passions, work towards your goals and hustle hard, the future won't seem so scary.

I hope you liked what you read,
Until next time

-Mikala