Miles+R’s+Final+AmEx+2015+Speech

Under Pressure
 * Title of Speech **

If you are a teenager who wants to get a tattoo, you have to get a parent or guardian's permission and if your parents are anything like say, my mom, then they’ll probably have a whole list of reasons on why you shouldn't get one.In this situation this particular argument comes up a lot, “ It’s permanent, what if you regret it in five years!” Using a line like that always confused me a bit because getting a tattoo’s one thing, but it seems today that teenagers are expected to know exactly what they’re going to do for the rest of their life in terms of education and career. These decisions shape the rest of our lives. There is obviously a lot pressure teenagers feel in high school all about what’s going to happen at the end of four years. From my experience there seems to be so much weight put onto having everything figured out and having a “plan” even before you get to college. I can understand where parents and authority figures are coming from, they want you to have a good life. Yet when you make one rigid plan for yourself you end up leaving little room for the spontaneity of life. Things don’t always go as planned and nothing can be “ perfect” so shouldn’t we graduate high school understanding that and not be forced to make dramatic life decisions when we’re so young and naive. The rest of your life shouldn’t be set in stone, I think we have to leave some wiggle room in our plans to go way worse or way better than we expected when we leave high school and step into the adult world. You could be interested in something now but that could change in five years. If you asked me what I wanted to do as a job when I was 10 I probably would have said something like working with animals now I’m interested in completely different career options. It’s fantastic if you know exactly what you want to do out of high school and it’s fine if you don't, Pressuring young people into believing that when you turn 18 thats it, you better have it all figured out, can stop them from trying new things at a time that that should be about finding out who you are as an adult. Adults may tell you to make one plan set in stone so you can start take on more responsibility, which is important in the adult world, but that shouldn’t mean you have to limit yourself. As someone with fairly average grades, part of me has been nervous I won’t be able to get into my first choice schools, yet there’s always a number of options, like going to a community college then moving on to a dream school. I never considered other options because I thought there was only one path to take in order to have a perfect life. But nah, the future isn’t clear and if I’m not able to change along with it I’ll be left in the dust. The tomorrow I want to see is one where there isn’t pressure and hard expectations surrounding young people's futures, but support and a sense of freedom. Being unsure about the future is intimidating and difficult, but I believe it makes life a little more interesting. Either way, it’s important to realize that we have plenty of time to accomplish our goals and make our dreams come true, in fact we have exactly the rest of our lives.
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