We all hate the school year. We hate it like we hate the Nazis. We hate it because it's a prison. The school is evil. It ends all our fun with shitty teachers and dumb classmates. We all hate the school year. We all love the summer. Summer is paradise. Think of all the friends you make in the summer! Think of all the fun have in the summer. It’s all in the summer. We all love the summer.
Except that, now, we don’t. I don’t. As if life during school doesn't make one feel lost enough, now we get a two-month holiday. No schoolwork, no tasks, no nothing. Endless gaming sessions. Uncountable hours of staying up past bedtime. Infinite freedom.
But with the freedom comes a price. The more one plays games, the more it feels wrong. With the inherent purpose of being a student stripped away, slowly, a creeping sense of guilt will overwhelm your body until it turns into a deep, throbbing pain at the back of your mind. And when you see others, seemingly working towards their goal in a beeline, the throbbing turns into a stabbing pain. But that’s when you realize a scary thing: You don’t know what you’re even doing.
So you try, desperately, to figure it out. And while the world and your mom tell you that the possibilities are infinite, you inevitably end up on one of the many mainstream careers that “actually makes money:” Computer science, computer science, and computer science… and perhaps biochem and economics. And when you realize none of those professions actually interest you, you turn to the humanities, which is when you inevitably face the question: Am I really good enough to compete with all the people who do it professionally? Am I really ready to take the risk?
Some eventually come to a decision. Not me. I spent the first weeks of the summer feeling like a numb little bug being pushed down the river by a leaf–too alive to give up all consciousness yet too weak to fend off the next wave that splashes onto the leaf.
Last month, I spent a month at Stanford as a summer program student. I got the chance to meet people from all over the world, and there, I discovered two things: a) Americans are loud and overly confident, and b) When asked about their future plans, everyone answers with a “maybe.” One of my friends from Brazil really wanted to be a doctor. He said it was because of his family heritage. Coming from a long line of doctors, he had been exposed to medicine, biology, and its many intricacies far before others. He knew everything about the human body, but he was not confident enough to give a definite yes. “Maybe I’ll be a doctor one day.” It was always the “maybe”.
That made me realize, maybe a “maybe” is fine for a plan for the future.
One day, I went back to my dorm feeling more hollow on the inside than ever. I wanted to be like everyone else: to know what I am working towards. To have a task beckoning my attention every time I finish my daily duties. So I asked myself: “Is there really anything to fear if I fail?”
No.
“Maybe I’ll be a writer then.”