Life After High School

I can feel myself getting older. How do I feel about that? -

This is something I wrote in my journal two days ago at 3 AM. You might or might not be able to tell that I was having a little crisis. Right after this happened I started looking for colleges and med schools. Instead of getting my (much needed) beauty sleep, I was trying to come up with a plan for my future in the middle of the night.

I might be young, but I know how life works. Things never turn out how you expect them to, which means that today I might decide I want to be a chef but later on end up being an astronaut.

Of course, I should at least have an idea of where I want to go and what I want to do. That's where things get complicated. For now, there's two things that I love: medicine and entertainment. Both of these have their own charms but they have one characteristic in common, being that in one way or another they make people happy.

Doctors make people happy by treating and (hopefully) curing the sick. Entertainers make people happy by (obviously) entertaining the public. I am well aware that these are very different career paths but they each have factors that make them very special to me.

I have been acting since fifth grade (I'm currently going into 11th grade) so you could say I've been doing this for a while now. For me, theater started as an after-school class to keep me out of my house. Nevertheless, it soon became my passion.

Over the years I've in two musical theater academies (I can't sing to save my life but somehow I managed) and just last year I attended an arts school where theater was my art. I love theater, not only because the process of getting a production from rehearsal to the stage is a lot of fun and hard work (which is amazing because I get super tired yet I'm also having the best time), but it's incredibly rewarding to be on stage and to see the audience smiling, having a good time, and enjoying the result of all the effort you, the rest of the cast, and crew put into a show.

I must say one of the best experiences of my life was being on stage dressed as a flower singing and dancing to the song, "Move It" from Madagascar The Musical, and having the sold out theater sing and dance along with us while the little kids got up from their seats and ran to the front of the stage.

I could see the looks of joy on people's faces every time I went on stage. My heart races just thinking about it. There is no way for me to make you truly understand how it feels but just know that I never wanted to leave the stage once I got on it.

On the other hand, we have medicine.

If I were to go into medicine (there is a good chance I will) I would like to be a surgeon. I have no idea how or when this happened but one day I just woke up with a love for science.

I was suddenly interested in how our bodies and the world work. Interested in the things that are beyond our current knowledge. Interested in energy, not only the one we produce (shout-out to ATP) but also the one that surrounds us, because everything is energy, and I need to know more.

I want to learn. There's so much that we don't know and I am so curious (also a shout-out to my 10th grade biology teacher, he played a big part on me discovering my love for science, and was the best teacher ever).

Life is fascinating and I just want to know more. Honestly, science never ceases to amaze me. Every time I learn something new I'm left dumbfounded. For example, the other day I was watching Crash Course (as per usual) and I learned about dark matter. We still don't know what dark matter is.

What we do know is that, according to NASA, the universe is composed of: 68 percent dark energy (which we know nothing about except for how it affects the universe's expansion), ~27 percent dark matter (we don't know what it is made of and we can't see it), and ~5 percent normal matter (a.k.a. everything that we can see). So to summarize, what we can see is only 5 percent of all there is and we basically have no idea what the other 95 percent of the universe is. That's insane.

The dilemma persists. What will I do when I graduate high school? I don't know. Will I continue acting? I don't know. Will I pursue a career in medicine? I don't know.

For now, all I care about is enjoying my life as a high school student and getting good grades. I'll be fine. Who knows? I might even end up being an astronaut.