Being pressured into doing something can sometimes come as a relief when you don’t know what you want. But having a choice is always the better alternative. Lucky for me, I realized this last year during the college application frenzy of senior year. Though I felt ready for college, and definetly ready to do something greater than high school, I knew that following another year of conventional learning wasn’t what I wanted. Put simply, I just wanted more.
One of the most valuable lessons that I learned during my high school economics class was that the most important investment that a young person can make is in their time. We are young and, relatively, not very powerful financially. We have only our time to invest.
I know that choosing to invest my time in becoming a Global Citizen was the smartest choice I’ve made in possibly my whole life thus far. Global Citizen Year has already given me more than I could have hoped for in the short time that i have been here. And it’s not only that I’m surrounded by a wealth of amazing, aware, and intelligent individuals, or that I’ll be living in a part of the world that fills me up after simply looking out of a window, or even the possibility that I may learn a third language this year while living in an indigenous community. For the first time in a long time, I feel like day by day, I’m learning.
And it’s measurable.
And I love it.
