a sort of a paradox

“I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys ‘R’ Us kid!” ~Toys ‘R’ Us Theme Song

*Throws a tantrum and screeches in high-pitched whiney voice* “I’m NOT a child!!!!!!!!”

It’s funny. I was going to say it’s a ‘unique’ problem, but then I realized it’s probably not so unique at all.
I’m 18 years old! I am, in the eyes of the law, an adult! Capable of making my own decisions; voting, joining the military, watching X-rated movies, buying cigarettes, playing the lottery!! And of course, I want to be treated as an adult. I don’t want my parents to impose a curfew on me, or ground me, or tell me that I can’t do this or that.
But at the same time, I don’t want to grow up. I don’t want to have to do things like pay bills, or godforbidtaxes or buy my own food. Things like figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. Even though I want the ability to make my own decisions, I essentially want to be told ‘go here’, ‘do this’, ‘don’t do that’… anything but ‘think for yourself’. I want to go back to when thinking was a luxury, not a necessity. Ugh, this is such an awkward age. Can’t somebody zap me into the future where I will have already done all this college and figuring out my life stuff??

I remember two or three years ago (was it that long already??) when I was trying to figure out what I might want to major in, because of course I would have to try to go to the best possible school for my major. I used a number of different college and major search websites, to try to aid me in my search. One site in particular, princetonreview.com, had a ‘career match’ quiz to take, that would allegedly match you up with your best possible majors for the careers that were best suited to your interests and personality. Of course the fundamental flaw in this method was that if the subject in question had already decided what they thought they wanted, they could answer the questions with a slighly skewed perspective so that the test would validate their opinion rather than give them an objective result. This resulted in me, taking that particular test in my junior year of high school, always making sure to answer the questions with a math, science or technology slant to them, so that it would tell me I should be engineer. Aha! Just as I thought. Similar tests (but not the same one) taken in 7th, 8th, and 10th grade told me to be to be a paralegal, a teacher, and a psychologist, respectively.

Even so, today in my boredom I decided to take it again. Only now, the test on The Princeton Review’s website has been revised to avoid the skewed perspectives of before. For example, rather than questions like “I enjoy math and math-related subjects; true or false” there are questions like “I would rather be a tax lawyer than a newspaper editor: true or false” So even though I wouldn’t want to be either a tax lawyer or a newspaper editor, I am forced to analyze the differences between the two jobs and pick one that I’d enjoy over the other if I was only given those two choices. A series of similar questions, followed by a series of questions designed to analyze your personality type, would come up with a result. And since I was fully aware of the mistakes that I had made before, I cleared my head, and took the test with a completely open mind. Because at this point I’m really just grasping at straws. Tell me something. Anything that could potentially help me.

The results were as follows: both my interests and my ‘style’ (personality) were given a color code of “blue.” Allegedly, ‘people with blue Interests like job responsibilities and occupations that involve creative, humanistic, thoughtful, and quiet types of activities. Blue Interests include abstracting, theorizing, designing, writing, reflecting, and originating, which often lead to work in editing, teaching, composing, inventing, mediating, clergy, and writing;’ and ‘People with blue styles prefer to perform their job responsibilities in a manner that is supportive and helpful to others with a minimum of confrontation. They prefer to work where they have time to think things through before acting. People with blue style tend to be insightful, reflective, selectively sociable, creative, thoughtful, emotional, imaginative, and sensitive. Usually they thrive in a cutting edge, informally paced, future-oriented environment. You will want to choose a work environment or career path in which your style is welcomed and produces results.’
And then they gave me a whole long list of almost 75 different career options. Great. Now I’m more confused than ever, and *still* ultimately have to decide on my own what to do. Ironically, paralegal, teacher, and psychologist are still on that list, whereas engineer is not. I don’t know whether or not to trust this evaluation, but then again all I know at this point is that I don’t want to be an effing cashier at Redner’s for the rest of my life. *Sigh* All I want is for someone to tell me “This is what you should do, and this is what you have to do in order to do that, and we’ll have a job all ready for you once you’re done.”

What do you think I should do?