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“The only thing I know is that I know nothing.”
These words have stayed with me ever since my 10th grade philosophy class on Socrates. I’m pretty sure Socrates meant to say something completely different about constant self-questioning in the pursuit of knowledge, but in spite of their seemingly contradictory nature, these words were more definitive of my first few years of high school than even Rory Gilmore’s high school life was on Gilmore Girls.
Like Rory, I spent around 90% of my time in high school poring over books and obsessing over my grades while ingesting massive amounts of burgers, fries, and milky cups of coffee. However, while Rory was on top of her rigorous schoolwork 24/7 and was so sure of her dream of being a journalist, I had no idea what I wanted to do and was unsure of why I even cared so much about school and learning in the first place.
Just this October, it occurred to me that I might have wasted the last two and a half years of my high school education.
In an intense bout of paranoia, I was afraid that the first few years of my high school life had passed without my learning or doing anything substantial. I was afraid that I had never been consistent with my academic goals, flitting from being an overachieving and highly motivated student one moment to a passive and extremely lazy one the next. I was convinced that so much of my academic life consisted of learning for the sake of getting top grades and using flowery words in countless essays and tests that ultimately made no sense. I had my doubts about whether or not the numbers on my report cards translated to what I could actually retain and process inside my head, and this worried me to no end.
Of course, this was just me overthinking things. The problem wasn’t that I was incompetent or incapable of learning and achieving great things. It just took a while for me to realize that the point of getting an education wasn’t for me to produce numbers on transcripts that supposedly determined my future and success as a human being, but to ensure that what I learn will stay with me for the rest of my life and truly enable me to succeed in any situation I encounter.
On top of constantly stressing about my grades, I had a plethora of academic interests that had me utterly confused on what I wanted to do and what exactly I should be focusing on in high school. From wanting to become a neurologist to a clinical psychologist to a full-time worker for UN Women, it’s only now in my junior year of high school that I realized that journalism could be the one thing I want to do for the rest of my life.
Currently I’m in the process of realizing that no matter how certain I think I am about anything, I will always be susceptible to change. So instead of worrying so much about how all my grades and extracurriculars will reflect on the kind of job I want to have, I should instead focus on learning for the sake of getting a solid education as the strong foundation that will prepare me to think critically and creatively in any given situation.
If I could only pull a Doctor Who and time-travel back to my first day of high school, there are so many things I’d tell 9th-grade self not to do or think.
The bottom line is, especially when you’re a teenager, you don’t owe it to anyone but yourself to know exactly what you want to do with the rest of your life. While it does help to be certain about some things, it’s also important to remember that obsession and unhealthy fixation can be more unproductive than one might expect. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with not knowing what you want to do with the rest of your life, so long as you’re able to see the value of getting an education and understand why it is you’re actually being made to read all these books and learn all these numbers and scientific names instead of just going through the process day after day to generate numbers on report cards. And a solid education doesn’t necessarily have to come from school alone, so long as you’re willing to learn from new experiences and develop a voice about something you’re truly passionate about. It’s important to remember that while your grades might play some part in determining your future, they will never, ever define who you are or your abilities or constitute your worth as a human being. So stop obsessing once and for all and just try your best to learn for the sake of learning.
