My hometown isn’t small but isn’t big either. My county has about 100K people living in a 60 square mile area whereas my current town, San Francisco with a 7 square mile land size, has nearly 1 million people. My hometown was small but we had a Wal*Mart, McDonalds and a few mechanics. It had everything that you would need in a “small town”.
I graduated high school in 2004 from Pedro Menendez and I was lucky because 400 of us were the first class of students who had attended the school for 4 years. The school opened in the year 2000 and that’s when I started my freshmen year. There’s a site that has been setup for high school alumni and there was a poll that asked, ” Which of the following is most important to you?” I was very surprised at the results.
Naturally, I answered “career” because as a 22 year old who has moved across country to pursue a life in social media, speaking and writing, that’s my primary focus and I feel that by 22, most kids are out of college and should be focused on their career because that’s just how it should be at least that’s how I think about things.
Instead the findings totally surprised me. It turns out in the town of Saint Augustine, Florida, nearly 60% of my pupils are now thinking about marriage, others are thinking about friends and then there’s a tie between school and career followed shortly by sleep.
Seriously? I’m not surprised because nearly all of my high school friends are still using Myspace and every one of their profile photos are pictures of babies and pickup trucks and a large number of them are just getting out of college or still have a fast food restaurant listed as their employer. Sometimes I get a little down or frustrated when I realize that I haven’t “made it” yet but I need to remember that I’m only 22 and compared to many of my peers from high school, my lifestyle is the exception and not the rule.
Great post, Adam. Interesting to see where you came from.
Yeah I also would have said career. Of course I’m still going to college i’d also say education, but marriage would be the last thing on my list. I want a kids and a healthy marriage but not without a good stable income to take care of the family. Also I’d want to get out there a little first live my life, make a difference and then settle down a bit, but never completely, i’m too much on the move. That’s just from my point of view though, but yeah it’s always good to get the important stuff out the way. That’s interesting statistics from where your from though. From what you speak of it, it sounds nice. Kudos on this post! XD