High School Years
Most often, it is during our high school years when self-inflicted emotional pain really begins to accelerate. We become increasingly preoccupied with how other people perceive us, and this begins to affect our personal choices. Not making an athletic team, or a cheerleading squad, or being asked out to a dance, can be extremely hurtful, particularly if you let it. Unfortunately, most of us do not realize how insignificant these issues are in the long run until much later in life. However, at the time a lot of these events seem monumental and forever life changing.
The concept of “self-awareness” starts impacting our daily routines. Everything from how we do our hair, to what we choose to wear, to how we behave, to how we react to how others treat us, are in full bloom. We start trying to determine where we fit in. Labeling others and ourselves intensifies. Labels like “he is a nerd,” or “a jock,” or “a brainiac” are just a few examples. For girls, labels are more often to be associated with their physical appearance. Getting labeled by others can be especially difficult to cope with because at this stage in our lives we do not have the life experiences in which to draw upon. Many become trapped in their own mental prison. While bullying in nothing new, social media has greatly exacerbated this problem.
The Tyber Lustig Foundation hopes to create content to help people better cope with being bullied or teased. We want to give people the tools to handle all the seemingly dramatic issues constantly threatening a person’s happiness and well-being.
As we progress through our high school years, we are made aware of the things we “ought” to be doing. Maybe it is as simple as getting a driver’s license or as complicated as “you need to figure out the rest of your life.” The most common (you ought to) to highschoolers is the “Where are you going to college?” question. Somehow the decision to attend a certain college or even go to college at all has become a litmus test to determine the necessary ingredients to living a satisfying life. The Tyber Lustig Foundation takes the position that this concept is flawed for so many reasons.
While many occupations require college degrees to further (formal) education, such as careers in law, medicine, and accounting, most do not. Continuing to learn new things is extremely important to a person’s pursuit to living their best life. However, the notion that a (formal education) is the only way to accomplish this is severely flawed and in many ways harmful to a person’s growth.
Assuming that a person has become highly functional in the highly critical areas of reading comprehension, basic math, writing, and communication skills, they are now ready to start mapping out their own personal life plan. As an important component in this plan is to figure out how they will be able to afford the basic necessities of life such as food, clothing, and a safe place to sleep. All of this requires money. In most cases a person needs to make money on their own, hence the word ”livelihood.”
How does a person decide what to do for a living? More often than not, we all have things we do better than most and have things we do not do as well. While we are still deciding, some feel continuing a formal education (college) is the best personal choice. Others have it more figured out and have determined college would just be a waste of time and unfortunately a waste of money.
Please visit our content in our “IS COLLEGE RIGHT FOR YOU?” segment.
