Choosing Your Destiny

          Do you know what you want to do when you grow up? That's a question that gets asked many times to a student in high school as they're planning a career. Sometimes, they don't exactly know what they're going to do, but know it's essential that they get it figured out, and sometimes, they don't. Planning your life and deciding how your going to support yourself is a extremely important question and decision to any young person. I watch the news, read articles and I first hand can see people who are deeply struggling in life just to get by, just to get their next meal. They might have not known exactly what they wanted to do with their life, and they did not have a steady job that would give them a solid salary. The workers that Barbara Ehenreich worked with during her minimum wage experiment in Nickel and Dimed, were people that didn't exactly know what they were going to be when they grew up, and they now struggle day to day, working ten harder than some millionaires do, to be rewarded with measly minimum wage. I wonder at times how that is even fair, but that's the type of life that comes with low wage jobs.
         When I am asked that typical high school question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?", I seem to have a grasp on an idea or concept of what I would enjoy doing for the rest of my life, but I'm still a little indecisive. I remember being a young kid, just six years old, saying I wanted to be a singer, then changing and wanting to be a doctor, then I wanted to be a nurse, but now 11 years later, I'm not exactly sure. I definitely want to continue my education after high school to pursue a career that I would make a good salary off of. I want to have a job where I could better someone else. I know that this takes a good amount of work and I can't just breeze through the rest of school, especially college and even more importantly the rest of my life without putting forth effort and drive. I now realize after reading Nickel and Dimed, and noticing the struggles every minimum wage worker Ehenreich worked with went through, I know what I need to do. If I want to achieve a comfortable life and knowing that I'm going to be okay economically, my effort needs to reflect that.
         In Nickel and Dimed, Ehenreich and her coworkers worked jobs that help a general cause, such as housekeeping and being a waitress. I would love to have a job where I could do something that would improve someones health, their outlook on life, their money situation, anything to make a betterment for somebody else. I hear about just one person making such a positive impact on somebody else's life, when their just doing their job. That would be something I would love to do, whether it be a psychologist, a physical therapist, I really just don't know, but as time goes on I know I'll be able to finally decide exactly what I want to do.