<p>I wanted to start a discussion about passions and their place in life as teenagers.
Passion is being defined as : a unique long term goal/dream one wants to accomplish.
Example being: I want to be a doctor so can help people- the passion is helping others and the passion is fufilled by being a doctor.
Another: I want to be an enviromentalists b/c I care about trees and the environments' affect on people.
Or: I want to become a CEO and influnece world policy -passion is prestige.
I have several questions that anyone can respond to.....
1. What are your passions ? Share them.
2. What is more important to you- doing what you love or what will make you money?
3. What do you dream of- getting into a good college or in twenty years doing something to change the world for the better?
4. If you have no passion(like on distinct goal) how do you motivate yourself?
I'm going to end this short and sweetly as not to bore you with more.</p>
<ol>
<li>I like languages, especially English. I also like history.</li>
<li>I choose the former.</li>
<li>I choose the latter (that’s the entire point of college, for me at least). I don’t see how my love for language is going to change the world, though.</li>
<li>N/A</li>
</ol>
<p>I also despise math with a passion. Does that count?</p>
<p>I want to be either a teacher, psychiatrist, or a doctor. I am interested in these professions because, like you, I enjoy helping people. Every time I help someone, I feel like I’m making someone’s life better, attributing to the world in a small way. Doing what I love is important providing that it enables me to live comfortably. What I mean by that is, I am content living in a small condo or house, but I don’t want to be homeless. Therefore, I have to consider the pay, but as long as I am able to live in one of those options, I am fine receiving less money for what I do. My dream is to go to a good college, while trying to attribute positively to the world. I’m not sure if you have ever read Mountains Beyond Mountains, but it portrays how one man can utilize his education to change the world. Ultimately, the book inspired me in a way that motivates myself to achieve and accomplish my goals. I assume, that as long as I try hard and do the best that I can, I will succeed in life:) BTW, your post is not boring!:></p>
<p>history has always been my passion. i remember when i was like 7 archaeology fascinated the **** out of me. i would even try to create my own fossils by putting leaves and stuff in dirt haha. i kinda grew out of that phase, but archaeology still excites me. in the future i’d like to accompany someone to a dig, though.</p>
<p>My passions have been cars, science, inventions, and helping poor people (i know it sounds cliche but I will explain). </p>
<p>Whenever I pass the Salvation Army, homeless shelter, food bank, etc, part of me dies because I know of how many people need help, how many receive it, and how many are turned away. I consider my experience volunteering at a free clinic as life-altering because I ave heard so many tear-jerking stories. It really made me think how lucky I am to atttend a private school, live in a nice house (lol, no palaces, it’s a cozy home;)), have loving hard-working parents, and afford necessities with some wants as well. </p>
<p>I would really like to have a career in one of the 3 fields I listed, and always imagined myself donating a good portion of time (and hopefully money) to charities as I grow older. Obviously, I would like to live comfortably doing something I love, and I strive to do so. </p>
<p>I mean going to a good college certainly may help one’s job outlook and open up doors for me, so I do want to go to some nice schools. I always envisioned myself as somebody, who if somehow gets lucky enough, would donate a large chunk of money if I ever won the lottery, got rich through my job, etc. </p>
<p>Looking at my run-down homeless shelter made me want to build a brand new one with enough funding & space to accamodate all of those in need. I hope I make sense…</p>
<p>Btw, I think that being a CEO is not all about prestige (I’m sure you agree haha), but the power of being in charge of a huge company can allow one to carry out greater things for charities and the better of the world. I mean a higher salary and increased contacts could do so much…
Good thread!</p>
<ol>
<li>I am hopelessly in love with languages. My mom had a gift for them, but never had the opportunity to use it because her family was struggling financially and she wasted her youth paying off her family members’ debts. Later, when I came along, she found out that I had inherited her gift. We had a computer game called Language Explorer when I was little, on which the players would learn 500 basic vocabulary words in English, French, Spanish, and German. There were different levels of the game. One day, when I was 6 years old, my mom caught me playing (and doing well in) the game on Polyglot/Expert level, and she was thrilled! Everything started from there, and while I cannot claim that I am fluent in German now, it’s the case with me for four languages, three of those being the other three featured in Language Explorer, and the last being my native tongue of Chinese. </li>
</ol>
<p>OK, enough of my blabbing. Moving on…</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Ideally, a bit of both. But it would definitely lean towards something I love doing. </p></li>
<li><p>Get into a good college first, then land a career that will end up having me contribute positively to the global community. Given my background in languages, this shouldn’t be too difficult… would it?</p></li>
<li><p>N/A</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Hey, thanks for all the responses. Personally, I kind decide what my passion is or what I want to contribute to the world at large.
Its interesting/difficult b/c sometimes I’ll be studying for a test at night and think what am I going to do with this- how can I use this knowledge to help anyone- whats the use of bothering- why try?
You guys all seem to have one thing you love more than anything else-it seems that college for you guys is a means to an end, which is interesting.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Languages and linguistics (I feel so typical now, reading the responses on this thread): Apparently, when I was a little, little girl, like 2, I always talked in whole sentences, with perfect grammar. My aunt was shocked that I was such a stickler. When we did vocab words in elementary school, I would look up their etymology, memorize it, and write it down as esxra info on the test, so that I knew I really was learning the origins. I took a bit of Spanish and French in elementary school, but I really fell in love with Latin in 7th grade. And now I like reading all the linguistics articles on Wikipedia, and doing language families. I taught Latin in an internship once and I did this whole day discussing Indo-European languages and cognates in them, and it was super fun. I love learning new words and I like to really understand them. A week ago, I was at my friends house and she had a pile of “SAT” words, and I went through and gave the definition of all but like 5 of them. She’s a beast at the math section though, so no worries. I never learned them for the SAT, I just see a word I don’t know and I write it down and look it up in a dictionary later. I’m in love with my thesaurus.</p></li>
<li><p>Ballet. I’m not very good, and I’m never going to be, but I love dancing. Whenever my mother gets really mad at me, she threatens to take it away, and I freak. A couple of times, no one’s been able to drive me there, and I’ll walk for the 1.5-2 hours it takes to get there, through a really bad neighborhood that terrifies my mother because they have drive-bys and whatnot, just to go. I love it.</p></li>
<li><p>Reading. It’s awesome. Sometimes I get super miffed with alliterate people, I just don’t get it. I refuse to go to bookstores if I’m sad, because I don’t want to taint my memories of them. It’s the dream of both me and my sister to just drop out of life for 2 years, stay home, and read.</p></li>
<li><p>Doing good things. I was telling my sister about all the community service I was planning to do after senior year, when I didn’t have summer homework to worry about, and I’d have a longer break, and she said (jocularly, she likes doing good stuff too) “Why would you do that after you’ve been accepted to college?” and that sort of made me realize that I really do like it. I want to do Teach for America or something similar when I’m older. I did the teaching internship thing, like I said, and a lot of the people from that go on to Teach for America. Habitat for Humanity is a ton of fun, and for every extraneous dollar I spend this year, I’m donating one to the Mae Tao Clinic in Myanmar. I call my councilman about issues. I just freak about stuff, like when they say the civilian death tolls on the news in the morning, and you think about all their mothers and fathers and spouses and siblings and kids and everyone else (I mostly think about their mothers) and on days when like 100 people die, I try to imagine what all of those tears would look like, how big of a puddle, or how loud all of those moans and screams would sound. I’m trying really hard to think of every person I see as a whole person with a whole life, with loves, and hates, and regrets, and not just some background character in my saga. It’s difficult.
I think I’m starting to get into recycling. My sister came back from college and she’s like “You’re so into recycling” but I guess it happened slowly so I never noticed it. I carry back recyclables in my suitcase now when I go on vacation if I can’t find a recycling bin, and I rinse out all my dirty recyclables, and if other people throw stuff away, I sneak around while they’re not looking and move it to the recycling. It’s sort of weird, and it doesn’t make that much of a difference, but I like it.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Just stating this stuff has made me look like such a good person. I’m really not. Last year I spent $1000 selfishly on stupid stuff (It seemed like I was spending so reasonably and suddenly, all my money was gone!), and I can be really snooty sometimes. When I was little my lifetime goal was not to be a good person or to live a happy life but to live ostentatiously (and yes, I did use that word. I saw it in a commercial for furniture). My mother is always like, “I know you really like linguistics, but honey, you like nice things.”</p>
<p>Ahh, I always type a book.</p>