Senior Sonja Hansen almost falls as she runs through downtown Sacramento for the Shamrock’n Half Marathon in March.
Once I was in lower school, sitting criss-cross applesauce on the gym floor listening to a PE teacher give a spiel on the game we were about to play. I noticed an alarmingly large lump on my calf. I squeezed my pant leg and didn’t feel anything, so I shoved my hand up the ankle to investigate.
Feeling cloth, I pulled out a corner and recognized the material as a pair of underwear. I shoved back the indecent garment right as the teacher had instructed us to run three warm-up laps around the gym.
I pictured how horrified the runner behind me would be after watching my underwear slip out of my pants and onto the floor, forcing them to swerve to dodge them. I couldn’t face the questions that would follow. Lucky for me, my underwear hooked onto my kneecap and stayed there crumpled throughout P.E.
That was the most nerve-wracking run of my life, and that’s how I consider my future professional career – a stressful, precarious sprint to who knows where.
When I was really little, I thought the powers that be picked your job for you. I thought there was a system based on your grades or behavior, and I was all for it. Two thumbs up for restricted freedoms and dictatorships.
Imagine my disappointment when I found that I lived in the “free-est country on Earth” and that “you can do anything you set your mind to.”
How can an individual be trusted to know what they’re best at? How does a person know that an activity is deserving of their talents?
Running late for prom and with her hands full, senior Sonja Hansen attempts to kick off her shoes into the back of her car so that she can drive to senior Riya Rampalli’s house.
Selecting a major seems like a bunch of baloney – not very appetizing. It’s putting the cart before the horse. How am I supposed to know what degree I need to acquire for my dream job if I don’t even have a dream yet?
To all of these people picking majors, do you have one of those telescopes from a National Park that you pay 50 cents to, but instead of a vision Yosemite Falls or the Grand Canyon, you see your future self pleased that you majored in basket weaving?
My grandmother, known to me as Mormor, worked as a dentist’s secretary. According to my mom, my grandmother’s boss graduated high school at 15, then finished dentist school and got to cleaning teeth. He then dropped everything to become a trucker because he hadn’t realized that dentistry was disgusting until he finally got cracking.
What if bakery science or accounting or bowling industry management becomes my dentistry?
Then again, maybe things are so chill in senior year that my subconscious is finding new and obscure worries to hassle me with.
—By Sonja Hansen
