Have you ever come across a video or picture of when you were little? Maybe you found photos of Easter egg hunts, birthdays with the extended family, or even that really embarrassing one of you in the bathtub, taking you back to when you didn’t have a care in the world. You weren’t thinking of school or the future - you were just having fun being you.

Sometimes I think, Wow, I would love to be that naive again. I didn’t know about the world or all its problems; all I knew was that my friends would come over to play on Saturdays.

I’ll be 16 soon and then it’s only two more years until I’m off to college. I don’t know what I want to do with my life yet, but I have discovered what I don’t want to do. Freshman year I thought I wanted to be in the medical field and became a member of the Medical Explorers.

Well, everything changed when my friend Vallerie and I went to observe a doctor at work. Little did we know we would be showing up on what I’ve come to call Butt Day. The first surgery we saw was on a patient who had hemorrhoids, and that was followed by two colonoscopies, during which Val fainted. When she hit the floor my face became warm and I started feeling dizzy, too. I knew enough to leave the room before I fainted, and it was then that I decided medicine was not for me.

Most people I talk to have it all figured out and know what they want to be. Right now I don’t want to think about those things. Life seems to be going a little too fast. We never thought about it when our parents and teachers told us to enjoy our childhood because it would be gone in a blink of an eye. Now decisions are coming at us left and right and it’s overwhelming.

I started feeling like this after I took the practice SAT last year. It’s things like that, that make you stop and think about the future. Soon I’ll be pulling all-nighters trying to study for the real SAT, then going to college, then hopefully getting married and starting a family, and on and on.

I wish I could stay 15 forever and never have to grow up, but I know that’s unrealistic. I know whatever the future holds, my friends and family will be there to guide and help me through it. For now, I’ll just take it one chemistry test at a time.