High School Advice For Marion Students (From Someone Who's Recently Been There)

You know those sayings that you've heard again and again that don't really mean anything, or seem like total baloney, for lack of a swear word?

"Be yourself," "stay involved in high school," "treat others the way you would like to be treated," "you are what you eat."

I've slowly found out that they actually mean something, once they randomly bury themselves in your brain like a bacteriophage injecting a viral genome into an otherwise healthy cell (if you haven't paid attention in chemistry, it's like Inception). 

These are often lost on us because these philosophies are distilled into poorly worded, easily ignored phrases uttered by people who often seem boring. So, I will tackle one of these oft-repeated saying and explain to you what it really means: stay involved in high school. 

That just means do something you like. Anything.

Theater, shop class, math, film-making, music, sports, coding, cartoon writing, sketching ideas for video games. It doesn't matter if "there's no money in that," or if the college you want doesn't have a major for it, or if that major doesn't exist or if the college that offers that is far away and expensive.

Now, here's the most important step: do that thing again. Then do it some more. Then don't stop doing it, even if it is hard (but do stop if you legitimately hate it).

That's really all it takes to excel in high school and to be reasonably happy in life.

If you develop that skill now, you can get into a good school and even get a decent scholarship. Once you are there you'll realize that 70 percent of your classmates don't have the knowledge or passion that you do, so that knocks off a lot of competition in the job market.

That also explains why there are a lot of majors that lead to few jobs or little money: because so many who majored never did anything beyond required coursework.

Don't worry if "there's no money" in your chosen field. I've been told on numerous occasions to "get out" of journalism, even by a successful employee of a decently sized metropolitan paper in Cedar Rapids, which I will not name. 

Still, I digress, for now, it doesn't have to be a "career path," all it has to be is something you like doing.

If you don't know, for the sake of god, don't worry about it. Try things. Give yourself a break if you fail or hate it and keep your mind open.

Finally, if you have an idea, but you wouldn't even want to admit to your friends, do that anyway. If you find that you spend all your time reading celebrity gossip and secretly dream you would like to work for a celebrity gossip magazine or website, but you feel embarrassed, start a blog anyway.

If you just do something, nearly anything, you are well on your way to understand even more vague adult phrases like when any adult figure tells you: you can be anything you want to be.