Transcriber: Nauka Nayana Reviewer: Sadegh Vahdati Nia
So I want to start out by asking everybody to raise their hand
if they know what they’re having for dinner tonight.
OK, now keep that hand raised if you’re going to have
the same meal for dinner next Thursday.
What about next Friday?
So you want that meal today,
but you don’t know that you want it next week.
Having to have a plan for after high school is kind of the same.
What we think we want now may not be we want next week,
and we can change our minds so much until a certain point in time.
Maybe that’s when the capstone project is due
or university applications are coming to a close.
But what if this time comes and some of us don’t know we want?
Our schools, our families, our society in general,
has created a system for my peers and I feel obligated to know
what we’re going to do once we get our diplomas.
As students, we are constantly being asked the question,
“What are you going to do with your life?”
And our answer is almost always expected
to include the name of the university you want to attend.
We’ve been taught to focus on what we want to be
rather than who we want to be.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been the person to have a plan.
I always knew what I was going to do.
I was going to be a real estate agent.
I was going to go to Vancouver to do my course and then build an empire.
Then, I was going to be a psychiatrist.
I was going to study biology and then go to med school.
Eventually, I changed my mind again and again and again.
Now, as a Grade 11 student,
I still have some time before I need to have a concrete plan.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel the pressure.
And this isn’t just me.
I took it upon myself to ask around.
I conducted a survey amongst 40 of my peers in grades 11 and 12 at my school,
and the results I found proved I wasn't alone.
When asked, “Do you feel any pressure with regards to post-secondary?”
Only four students answered No,
meaning that 90% of the students I asked
feel pressure to know what they’re going to do after graduation.
This is staggering to me.
Going back to something I briefly mentioned earlier,
the capstone project, essentially, at its core,
the capstone is a planning project,
to plan for your life is going to look like after high school.
The next part of my survey asked students how they felt about the capstone.
80% of the students I asked said they felt the capstone was useless.
Some added comments along the lines of,
“I think it’s important, but needs to be modified.”
I asked these students to elaborate on how they would modify it.
Almost all of them said to make it a project in English class
or to make it something which doesn’t have a grade attached to it.
Now, for the most part, “planning” in school
is almost always focused on what we are going to be doing.
Currently, the university presentations almost every day.
Trust me, I've attended almost all of them.
However, there’s no information regarding gap years,
where kids want to travel, or entering
the workforce right after high school.
For kids who want to pursue things that aren't university,
they are left on their own to figure out how and what to do,
or worse, are left to feel like they don’t have a place.
For most kids, it’s probably even more stressful
because they aren’t provided the resources.
To that end, wouldn’t it be amazing if schools could normalize
not knowing what you’re doing after graduation?
In my curious class this year, my teacher would give us
assignments that would focus on
how wellness was going to carry into our lives as adults.
This was the first time in any academic setting I’d ever been in
that the subject of our futures was talked about
without mentioning the career we were going to be in.
I think a lot of classes could benefit
from taking on this perspective
because it’s another aspect of who we are going to be.
It isn’t just the school system, however,
that perpetuates our stress.
Our families play a part in that, too.
I used to have this constant fear that I would disappoint my parents.
Now, looking back, I know this is super irrational,
there was a point almost every day I was being asked,
“What are you going to do after graduate?”
And I always felt the need not only to have an answer,
but what I would have qualified as a “good answer”.
This translated into me putting so much more pressure on myself
and my anxiety got so much worse.
The last question my survey ask students
how their parents play into their post-secondary stress.
80% of the students I asked
said they felt added pressure from their parents
have a concrete plan for after high school.
We’re teenagers. We’re already stressed.
We don’t need our parents to add to it.
However, I don’t want to place blame on the parents
because most of the time, they say things
they think are encouraging or helpful,
when really, they’re inadvertently adding
to the stress as kids feel,
they may not know the impact that their words carry.
So, parents, please let your kids figure out what they want to do
on their own time.
Let us come to you when we have a plan,
or think we do,
and don’t force us into conversation.
Check in now and then.
But don’t force us into conversation about it.
And SD23, as well as other school districts,
Please like grads like me see other opportunities.
Better yet, show us.
Bring people in to talk about gap years
or working right after high school. Not just university recruiters.
There are other paths in life that don’t have to be post-secondary.
Everyone that has a student in their life.
Encourage us. Support us.
Let us discover new things.
Instead of asking us what we want to be, ask us who we want to be.
Because at the end of the day, figuring that out
will lead us to do some truly amazing things.
Thank you.