“What do you want to be after you graduate high school?” This is the one question I can never seem the find the answer to. I’ve never fully understood how a profession could be chosen so easily. I mean, how should I know what I want to do for the rest of my life? Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve struggled to find some sort of path or even something that I had the slightest interest in, but it always changed.

I didn’t start thinking about what I wanted to be until I started to watch The Little Mermaid religiously. I know every quote in the movie by heart. From that point on, I only wanted to be a mermaid. Just the thought of swimming in the ocean all day with my fish friends made my little five-year-old heart flutter. Every time I went swimming, I forced my family to address me by “Alex the Mermaid.” I had it all planned out. I even went as far as to find the most glittery mermaid tail I could find, and I wore it everywhere I went. My future was spoken for, and I was as content as I could ever be.

As soon as reality stuck me, I changed my “Alex the Mermaid” path to wanting to become a photographer but not just any photographer. I wanted to be a marine photographer. I imagined myself every day sitting in a boat with the sun beaming on my already sun burnt skin, but that would mean that I would have to pack up everything and move closer to the ocean. Leave Ohio? I couldn’t. Every career I thought I might be interested in, always ended in this conversation with myself: ‘You’re not smart enough for that. You don’t have the strength to do that. In the one in a million chance that you do succeed you’ll never be as good as anyone else. That’s not even a realistic career.’

After I talked myself down from that career, I was stumped. ‘I am not good at anything.’ This thought always bombarded my mind every time I thought about what I wanted to be. After talking to almost everybody that I knew, I was told the same answer. “You’re great at helping people.” My mom was a mental health therapist for many years, so obviously my first thought was to become a therapist. I was sticking to that mainly until once again I felt that I were not good enough. My current phase in the career searching is to study Forensic Psychology. The CSI shows always seem cool, right?

In the crowded hallways, I hear my peers talking about how great they’re future is going to be, and they know exactly how it’s going to play out. Discouraging is the only way that I can describe that feeling. It seems I’m the only person who has no idea what the future holds. Every teacher has told me that it’s okay not to know what I want my career to be, but that doesn’t make it any less stressful. As a junior in high school, I feel like I have an automatic obligation to know exactly what my future is going to look like. The truth is, I have absolutely no idea what I want to be when I grow up. Maybe it’s not too late to pursue my mermaid dream.