I graduated high school earlier this year and I’m already feeling crushed by the weight of adulthood, mostly by the work aspects.
I feel so overwhelmed because of the realization that I will be in full-time school for the next 6 years, having to try hard for a competitive GPA while also working and doing extracurriculars, just to then go into a career that pays relatively mediocre for the amount of schooling and effort required.
I’m very grateful for the opportunities I have to get a higher education and work in the career I want, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t stress me out. I go to class every day of the week, I do schoolwork in between those classes, then I come home and have to either go to work or continue doing an assignment that’s almost due. I have to compete in academics and extracurriculars for grad school admission, but every day I feel like I’m barely scraping through. I don’t feel like I can accomplish much with the state I’m in, feeling so overworked because I never get a break. I don’t see myself getting a break for the foreseeable future, and that really sucks. I can’t express how much I wish that careers in America would be treated like a means to an end, so I wouldn’t have to make it my entire life. When it’s not stress from school, it’s going to be stress from work for the next 40+ years. It’s just so insane to me that we all have to toil so hard for so long just to make a stable enough living to get by.