Looking Towards the Future

As some earlier posts have said we were visited this past week by Juandiego Wade, a member of the Charlottesville School Board. He discussed many interesting topics with us related to young people in and around C-ville, such as the school system, role models, and the obstacles these people face in their attempts to grow and learn. One idea that he talked about which sparked my interest was the concept of long-term planning. Mr. Wade said that many of the troubled youth he meets find it difficult to see what their own futures look like. Many say that they want to become a professional basketball or football player, but don’t realize how high the odds are stacked against them and they have a hard time coming up with a backup plan. This got me thinking about my own long-term goals and how I developed them. Oftentimes I take it for granted that there have always been people telling me to think five or ten years into the future, as I think we all do. As kids we all went through that phase where we wanted to be a baseball player or an astronaut or a firefighter or something along those lines. Generally at some point these fade into “dream jobs” and we are forced to think more realistically, usually by our parents or schools. But some people don’t have that individual to tell them that being an astronaut is that 1 in a million type of job. So think about those people who have helped you think forward and ask yourself, what does your future look like?-MA