Jinked

Everyone from the Discoveries Unlimited mentoring program met up bright and early this morning at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore to learn about invasive plants and animals then go for a walk in the nearby park collecting seeds of native plants. These seed are to then be replanted not next year but the year after. I did my civic wildlife duty for the month… that is if there is such a thing!

It was nice to see K again and try to make a connection.

I thought about a lot of things as we walked as a group, mentor and mentee through the trees, crunching leaves and acorn tops underfoot. I thought about the program, what I could offer K, what I could offer fellow mentors. At one point we stopped on the trail and the park ranger was talking about some sort of sunflower. By this time K and I had made some small talk about school, but now we were standing in silence. I was looking around at the trees listening, thinking, and then out of the corner of my eye I saw K playing with the faux fur on the hood of another girl’s parka.

I don’t know why that stood out or why I kept silent and just watched, but I realized then that what I wanted to offer K was not some narrow view of my STEM career, but to let her know that it’s okay to be unsure about life.

Sometimes I wonder if we’re pushing kids too hard too fast, making them grow up before the exit of childhood and adolescence is even in sight. Plan, push, commit. These girls are going to be adults for a very long time. Blink twice and before you know it you’re on the cusp of your twentieth birthday. They only have so long to be kids and teenagers.

When I was thirteen I was hardly sure what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I thought maybe I could compose music for video games, be the next Nobuo Uematsu. I still thought about my grade school dreams of being a meteorologist, a fashion designer, a model. I was only beginning to write small stories at that age, and the web didn’t exist for me in 1995.

I didn’t fill out a college application until the last semester of my last year in high school, and even then I only did it because my guidance counselor told me it would be a good idea. In 2005, when I graduated from university with a BA in English, I still had no idea what I wanted to do. I knew I loved creative writing and that I loved to read, but I couldn’t earn a living from that. Eventually, in 2006, I got a job at an online advertising company as a marketing assistant. I didn’t shift positions there and start earning a paycheck for designing and coding websites until 2008.

I’m 28 now and I still don’t know if web design and development is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I don’t think it is. I’m confused, I’m unsure, I don’t have a job right now, and I’m starting to panic a little about my 30th birthday.

But you know what? I’m cool with that.

Honestly, I worry more about the girls who have rigid life-career plans laid out at the age of thirteen than the ones who the only thing they’re sure about is what mom is making for dinner tonight. Life is about uncertainty. My friend Atom once said that it’s a good thing to be uncomfortable in life. It means you are not stagnant, that you’re evolving. And strangely enough, it’s during those uncomfortable times that life feels like it has the most meaning.

That is what I want to teach K. It’s good to have passions, hobbies, interests, but it is also good to be unsure. When we are uncertain we see doors that we normally wouldn’t see. We meet people we normally wouldn’t meet. We discover, learn, grow, and we become better people because of it.

I only hope that’s a good lesson to teach.