A New Outlook

                  High school is a crucial time in someone's life. It's a difficult time. It's a confusing time. You have the people who would do anything to be cool. You have the people who would do anything to be different. But all of our actions to make us fit in with a crowd based on our exterior helps stops in high school. Eventually you have to grow up and most of us, whether we like it or not, are pushed into growing as people. I found this especially happening with success. When I graduated from high school I was beyond excited. I was going to continue on to college and reach my goals in life. However, my goals in life didn't go beyond a year's planning. When we are young we do not think about how are actions today are going to affect our future. And I don't mean our future as in, a couple of years from now or even 10 years from now. It is going to affect us for the rest of our lives.
                 Life is all about a series of multiple life changing decisions. Whether it be the girl you let get away or the decision of going to a community college first and transferring to a university later. It can be a decision to move out of your parents home or a decision to get married at a you a young age. You can choose to lose your virginity at a young age or choose to wait until your wedding day. The point is to accept the decisions you've made. People say to live life with no regrets, but anyone who has ever made a bad decision knows that this saying is untrue. I have plenty of regrets in life which is how our lives are determined. Regrettable decisions are what molds us into the adult life that awaits us. I have came to terms with the idea of recognizing the existence of bad decisions that I have made. The only way to grow into the person that I would like to become is to grow and learn from them. Before life for me was all about having the prettiest girl as a companion, partying without a care in the world, and passing classes. Now, that I am about to graduate from college with my Bachelors in English, I can see the type of life that my decisions have laid out for me.
                College was a great experience for me. Not the way high school was for me. High school was more the time to make friends and help break out of my shell. My college experience was the time for me to break rules and do things that I would never think of doing when I was a young teen. Making the decision to be tame in high school and to do whatever I wanted to do in college was the right decision for myself to make. Applauding yourself for good decisions is just as important as feeling down about yourself when you make bad decisions. Being modest with others is a good thing, but being modest to yourself is something that one should keep from doing. Be confident in your decision making. Sometimes we hit and miss with our decisions. Most of the time when we miss we feel like complete idiots and can't stand the sight of ourselves in the mirror. But when we hit we should celebrate to the same type of extreme in a positive way.
                 I have lived life with plenty of regrets of my own, but as an adult I can now see that all my hard work and all of the obstacles that I have overcome are not the important things in my life. The decisions that I made to get there are what matter the most. Hearing that people make "life-decisions" is confusing to me because every decision that we make is a "life-decision." It affects our lives, in either a major way or a minor way, but overall they change us forever.