You think I should go to college. It's apparent in your eyes, and I can understand why you would want me to. After all, nothing in my future is secure. School might help me a little, right?
What if I don't want to be secure?
I don't want to go to college. Gasp.
I have spent seven years in elementary school, three in junior high, and three in high school. I don't want to spend another four locked in lecture rooms with professors who don't know my name.
I want to travel. I want to be smart because I absorb things or look for things, not because someone shoveled books and speeches into my head. I want to be able to tell stories, to capture a crowd with the time I was stuck on a train in Germany for five hours, or the time I rode an elephant in India, or the time I ate a live octopus in Japan. With a twist of my wrist and a toss of my hair, I want to become fascinating, because I have seen things whose wonderful images are only imagined by so many.
I want to visit the streets of Paris, the stony lochs of Scotland, the precious lush hills of my Ireland. I want to wander the Taj Mahal in India, to buy delicate scarves in Bangkok, to go to the theatre in London. I want to dance in Casablanca, to snap pictures in Tokyo, to go to market in Lourdes.
Weigh it in your hands. A quiet, dry, formal education... or a rich lifetime teaching myself.