My Future, My Choice

My Future, My Choice

I believe in honesty. Honesty plays an important role in my life. As a child, my parents and peers always taught me the importance of honesty. Teachers in grade school spent a great deal of time trying to teach me the importance of honesty and how it will affect my life in the future. I came to learn that it is not only important that I am honest with others, but also honest with myself.

It would seem that being honest with oneself is easy. But I have found that being honest with myself is a hard value to acquire. Recently, the hardest time to be honest with myself was when I realized that I didn’t want to attend college right after high school. Not wanting to attend college is a hard thing to admit to myself when all my friends are choosing their own colleges. I have come to the realization that, right now, college is not the best thing for me. I’m not sure if I want to spend the next 2 to 4 years of my life in college. Honestly, right now I don’t feel that I am prepared for college. College is expensive and I don’t want to put my parents or myself in debt because of college loans. I also feel that I could do better things with my life without going to college. I would like to get a job that I like and save money to eventually attend college. As a practical matter, I would like to be able to move out of my house and afford an apartment. That would be good for me because I don’t want to live with my parents forever. I would like to become independent.

Just because it is hard to be honest with myself about something that can change the rest of my life, does not necessarily mean it is easy being honest with those around me on this issue, either. I always feel that by telling my parents and family that I’m not planning on going to college they will somehow lose hope in me. I am college worthy; I just don’t feel that college is right for me at this point in my life. I feel that some people think that if I don’t attend college I won’t become something. On the one hand, my parents and family trust me to make my own decisions and will love me no matter what I choose to do. Yet, in a way, I still feel that I am letting them down, even though they would never tell me so. My parents have a lot of hope in me but I still feel that I am disappointing them because I would have been one of the first in my family to attend college. My mother especially wants me to attend college, she is always trying to get me to fill out applications and take tests that will help me get in, such as the SAT’s and ACT’s. She wants me to be the most prepared for it, if I do decide to go.

I have found that being honest is sometimes very difficult when my future is involved with so many wishes for my future from other people. Most times, it is pretty simple to be honest with those around me but when it is something that I am uncomfortable being honest about; such as college, it is hard for me to be honest. It is difficult because I have to make such a huge choice in such a short period of time, which could affect the rest of my life. I still feel that I am a disappointment, but I have to do what I feel is right for me. And for me, attending college isn’t my number one priority in my own life right now.