Defining Success

This is a paper I wrote for English 111 in the fall semester...yeah, I am being a lazy blogger and not posting anything I've written lately...not having written anything blog-able lately. I've been working on my books and songs and lovely things like that, but I believe it's time for some good old fashioned old stuff. My views on the subject haven't really changed, though ultimately my goals and stuff have altered (no more dog training stuff, really). However, I think it's kind of worth reading (not to toot my own horn or anything)...I got 110% on it, so i reckon either my teacher liked it a lot, liked me a lot, or it was a good paper. Here we go:

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What is success? These days, many people will define it as studying hard to get good grades in school so to get into a good college, so that one may earn a “worthy” degree in order to get a high-paying job, in which one performs well, to get many promotions. Along side of that designation is usually something about meeting a special someone and possibly having kids. But must every person in America (or anywhere else) fit into that mold? I personally think not. Success cannot possibly be defined by the achievement of one common goal. Yet that is exactly what kids in school are taught every day. Parents and teachers are constantly forcing this “dream” upon grade-school children. But what about children who want to break the mold? What if they don’t know how? What if they feel as if they will disgrace their families?

There are two things in this world I think that I have always wanted to be, and those are a writer and a mother. Some other considered occupations have been: ballerina, dance teacher, Olympic gymnast, Olympic swimmer, comic strip creator, actor, director, producer, psychologist, dolphin trainer, puppy breeder, mailman, comedienne, pirate, rock star, model, “Ask Abby” columnist, backwoods expeditionist, sailor, and fitness trainer. The reader may be surprised, but many of the above mentioned jobs are new or recently revisited fancies of mine. My most current whim is dog training. The subject fascinates me so much right now, but it is sad to know, deep in my heart, that the desire to be a dog trainer may pass in time, as with everything else I have ever wanted to do. At the same time, I am attempting to discipline myself to stick to it, because it seems like now or never if I ever want to have an interesting and possibly easy way to make money.

Because I have been home schooled all of my life, the environment that I have grown up in has been different than the average student’s. But now that I am a senior in highschool, I have noticed that, ultimately, it all turns out the same. Most highschool seniors still do not really know what they want to do in life. In spite of everything they usually go ahead and jump right into college. They are unsure of where they are supposed to go in life, so college becomes another comfort zone, as grade school probably was. My mom said she jumped into college not knowing why or what she wanted to do afterwards. I have also noticed similar behavior in both my older friends who have already gone off to college, and same-age peers as they prepare to graduate with me.

The idea has been tempting to me, too. I’ve gone around in millions of circles in the past eight or nine months, pondering over what I truly would like to do for the rest of my life. Every time I settle on something I say to myself, “Okay, this is the one this time! This is my calling.” Of course, I usually change my belief about what my “calling” is every month, give or take a couple of weeks. Naturally, it would be nice for me to simply choose one thing to study for four years, and sit back and “relax” while I learn it all, feeling secure in the knowledge that, once I graduate, I will have a degree that will supposedly make me tons of money in the corporate world. But, by the time I graduate, will I even want to have a job even close to what I majored in? Knowing myself, probably not.

What bothers me even more when I talk to people—friends, extended family, random people on the street—is that they cannot seem to comprehend, visualize or in any other way understand the idea that I may not be going to college. I have several home schooled friends with whom I have discussed life after high school. I have mentioned my indecisiveness about college to a few, and I almost always get the same reaction: “Well, have you applied anywhere yet?” (“No.”) “Well, you’d better soon, because you’re a senior, right?” (“Yeah.”) “You have your SAT scores back by now, I guess?” (“I haven’t taken the SAT.”) “What? Well, you’d better take it soon!” (“I don’t want to.”) “But you have to take it in order to get into college.” (“No I don’t.”) “Uh, yeah you do!”

The truth is, I don’t want to go to college. Period. I have officially made my decision. I do not even know why, when people ask me what my post-high school plans are, I say things like, “Well, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to go to college.” After all, by now I know for sure that I do not want to go to college. So what do I even bring the subject up for? I could skip all that useless conversation (mostly consisting of my mulling over miserably while the other person tries to convince me that college is the best and only way to be considered a successful home school high school graduate) and simply answer that person’s original question as assertively as possible: “I am planning on applying to work at a pet store once I turn eighteen, while interning or assisting at a dog training and rehab center for a year and a half, and then I plan to go up to Indiana for a year to intern at Wolf Park and study canine behavior, before coming back and becoming a full time dog trainer, either working for an established business, taking over one or starting my own.” That confident answer is something which should be entirely acceptable, yet somehow I guess I fear that if I mention this plan, the people I talk to will think it’s silly because it’s not their definition of success. I start believing that they might think that my plan is most definitely going to fail, and they might even have the nerve to tell me so and to deter my plans towards something they feel I should do.

Why should I care?

I am apparently too ashamed to voice my plan for my own success simply because others may balk and not take me seriously. On that note, am I secure enough in what I want to do not to crumble under the criticism. Well, where will they be in four years? They may be lost and confused, just as I am sure I would be after college. All that intense learning…and now what? For my life, for what I want to do, what good is college to me?

I am not completely opposed to college. For many careers, such as doctors, lawyers, and teachers, it is necessary. And, of course, here I am taking an English class and a Psychology class this semester. The truth is, I would like to continue taking college courses for my own educational benefit. There is nothing wrong with that, and if I really did change my mind and want to go to college, then the credits would transfer easily (and I may not have to take the SAT). I am also not saying that my friends are wrong in going to college not knowing what they want to do. I am just stating that that is not what I want to do personally, and I am stating that it is not the only way to succeed in life, as my friends and many other people suppose.

If I decide to go to college, I may indeed graduate with high grades and a good degree, get a good job and make lots of money thusly. That is all fine and dandy, except that it is not what I want to do. Me, I want to jump right into doing a job that I love, learning useful things I also enjoy (not things I am forced or obligated to learn) and taking pleasure in my life as soon as I can. I am not a classroom person, and that is either because I have been home schooled or in spite of being home schooled. Either way, I learn better by emersion in a hands-on environment. Then again, not all home schooled kids are like this. Some are educated in a format just like a class room, but at home (what’s the point?). My parents realized that they could not get away with doing that for me.

If I am successful in the way that the culture defines being successful, does that make me the ideal homeschool graduate? I guess so, because people who do just that are idolized by millions of home schooled kids and home schooling parents across the country, and frankly I think it’s annoying. I have two homes schooled friends who were going to be in their senior year along with me this year, but both agreed to let their parents hold them back a year so that they could get more high school credits and raise their GPAs, all for the sake of college and success. Are grades everything? Performance and physical results have got to count for something.
I guess the only way I am going to get the different definitions of success across to the misunderstanding people in my life is to go out and do it. Go and write my own true success story, showing the narrow minded people that it can be done. I can talk about how wonderful a dog trainer I am going to be without double-majoring in animal science and comparative psychology, but no one will see that there are other ways until those other ways are executed in the plain sight of my large group of doubters.

Once people see that today’s definition of success may not necessarily be the right one for everyone, maybe people will, if they feel like they should, begin to branch off and start being them selves, doing their own things, taking many different paths. It’s not all college and good jobs. Sometimes, success should be what a person loves and passionately wishes to do with his or her life. That is my ideal, and my definition of a successful person.

Success is what you make it.

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~Jessica