What a wonderful topic. Thought I'd never get to express what's really going on in my life right now.
Let's start with my job, I work for a large automotive supplier as a technical assistant. This is no where near where I would like to be, sucks very badly, and I would like to leave as soon as possible. I've been working there for about a year and a half, simply because I'm frozen in a state of career confusion...I'm only 19.
By the way, I'm not trying to bore anyone or make them feel sorry for me, but maybe I can learn something from someone in here. Here's my story...
Throughout most of my schooling (well since about 4th grade), I was the smart kid who didn't do his homework I guess you could say. I've always had a fascination with technology and the sciences, but hated to be pushed to do something. In junior high, I upset the algebra teacher because I was finishing her work before she had showed the class how to do it. I was given a high school math book, and willingly completed more challenging lessons. In 8th grade I ordered a very large calculus book, and focused on it for a while. I was really into math, I even learned nearly 150 digits of PI in one night, just for the heck of it. Towards the end of 8th grade, we completed our state school exams, I ranked number 1 out of about 270 students on the sciences portion. This is when I started to realize that maybe I had some ability.
When I made it to high school, my mindset really started to change. Most of the math and chemistry homework I was getting, I was not completing. I would have ups and downs of when I wanted to show my ability. I was always someone who worked completely on their own, so for some reason I almost started to get angry with what I was being forced to do, even while knowing what I was doing wasn't the best thing to do. My grades had really dropped. Towards the end of that year, I started failing an accelerated algebra class which I was in, which was EASY stuff. It was simply the homework...I hated it. The following year I had to re-take that same class with the same teacher. On the first day of school, our teacher suprised everyone by giving out a fairly large algebra exam. His reason for this is that he wanted to see specifically what his class actually knew, before he planned out a cirriculum. Later that day I was called down to the counselors office. When I got there, my math teacher was also there, holding my exam. He told me that I had ace'd the exam, and that they were moving me to an accelerated geometry. He also issued me the previous credit from the year before. This was amazing for me! It sparked a flame inside me of determination.
Although I could write for days, what eventually ended up happening is descent grades throughout the rest of school, but read on...
I still had that feeling of rebeliousness, and to do things on my own. I started taking easier classes just to slack...the teachers thought I was hopeless. Fortunately, what was really happening outside of school is that I was studing any advanced topic I could find in the local library, or anywhere for that matter. Wherever I went, my books would go, and I was reading. I learned as much physics as possible, it was my passion. I became very interested in Einsteins theory of relativity, and read a few books on it. Maths were also a top priority, as well as photonics and the chemistries, not to mention computer systems.
I ended up getting this job I work now, and then graduated highschool as an "average" student. When I graduated, there were many things that I wanted to cram into my head over the summer, so I could go off to an aeronautical or mechanical engineering school come fall. Things soon after started to upset me, because when I spoke of my dreams, people wouldn't believe in me, simply because of what I had demonstrated to them. If they only knew.
As sure as I was about what I was aiming for, the closer it came to fall, the more confused I was to become. I decided I just couldn't force myself into a decision yet, the summer had gone by, and I was feeling as if I were still in high school, all my friends going to college.
Confused I was, and confused I still am. It's like I'm striving for this dream that might never happen, simply because I don't know which dream is really mine. I can picture careers in my head the way I would love them to be, but afraid of what they really are. The biggest feeling that I have, and am afraid of, is the ones I felt when I had to be forced to do certain things throughout high school. I'm afraid I will go off in pursue of something, and find out my life has become what I don't want it to be.
So here I sit, like everyday, trying to figure out what it really is that I might want to do with the rest of my life, and aiming for a school next fall. Rocketry has become the only way I can leave the real world, while doing something that I love to do. Currently, rocketry is more important than anything to me. Most people would think, go for a rocketry career, but as I said, if I chose something along these lines for a career, I'm afraid that what I really love and do, may be driven out of me. Or may just be...very far from what I picture it as.
