The Five Year Plan

            5 years down the road, I will be a junior in College. And unfortunately nothing else is really set in stone for me. Throughout my entire life, I have never really thought of what I wanted to be, or how I wanted to live my life. As I grew up and lost the childish dreams of being a baseball player or the president, I really never shifted towards a more realistic goal. Instead I focused on doing the best I could at school, a conservative and easy choice, because I had to go to it. I had no say in the matter, and so I didn’t have room for a decision. It’s almost still lost on me that in less than 3 years I will be in college, past this part of my life and needing to make that decision I’ve been putting off increasingly fast. So I started with the fact that I want to be there: a good college, getting good grades, and doing my absolute best. Those are sure things that I know how to do and have been attempting to do since my first day of school as a 4 year old. As far as what I will major in, it is a really hard decision for me. I have quite a few interests that could turn into careers, such as my commentary turning into sports broadcasting or my gaming reviews turning into gamin journalism, but I just can’t think of myself picking one to center my entire life around. I imagine I will be doing one of these things, but instead of dwelling on it, I think it is better to assert the things I am in control of at this moment. By the time I am a college upper classman, I hope to have made some money by getting a job, have a car, and be learning important life skills about living on my own. Hopefully I will be excelling enough to have some jobs and places to live lined up for when I graduate, and be set for whatever I choose. I don’t know what college I will be going to, but I hope whatever it is that I am able to get a head start on paying off my loans. Other than that, I don’t have any long term goals for my 5 years. Most of them just center off the base of being successful and happy, which goes for most people.

            In order to fulfill these goals and expectations for myself, I will have to put in the work this year. Like I said before, it seems as though the years have caught up to me really fast, but this year will be very important toward reaching college and in effect that position 5 years from now. Therefore, I really need to step up my game. I need to get things done on time, space out my workload well and excel in my academic studies. I need to keep my grades on the rise, a couple of my classes stunned me at the beginning of the year, and I need to assertively make sure I step up my game now and hold it before I dig myself a hole. I need to get good grades, maintain a high GPA and ace my standardized tests. However, I need to also make sure I don’t overcook myself. I have actively attempted to join clubs, step outside the box, and find different extra-curricular to in the past year. But with my schedule, it will be hard to manage everything. So this year it is important to weed out which activities I really want to continue in, in case my all AP schedule. However, it’s not exactly as simple as saying I can do these things. There will be many obstacles in my way.

            If I want to reach my goals, there are a few things I will have to overcome. My first major obstacle is a personality flaw. I cannot physically manage my time properly. I’ve tried for a long time to stop procrastinating, but it still happens. I tell myself that I won’t do it, but then I realize that before I can even think about working on something due two days from now, I have something due tomorrow. That stuff takes precedence, it takes a long time, and it is too late to work on the next thing before I go to bed. This trend has encompassed my entire school career for the past4-5 years, but that kind of thing cannot happen in college. Because there are huge assignments like term papers, procrastinating is one the easiest ways to fail in college. Therefore, I will need to correct this flaw in order to succeed. Another obvious problem is going to be money. My dream is to get into a great school, but I don’t know what kind of a school I can realistically afford. My parents worked really hard to pay for my sister’s college this year, and money has been pretty tight lately anyway. Since she will still be in school when I enter, I am counting on there being a lot of money problems. I need to keep track of this early by getting a job when I am old enough and starting to save up as much money as I can and be smart with my loans. I intend on taking risks with loans if I do get into a great school, counting on a good job when I get out, but that’s a dangerous maneuver since my family has no money to fall back on. I hope that if I can overcome these two things and use the previous strategies, I will be right where I want to be 5 years from now.