Imagine Your Life in Ten Years
Every week, our Week in Rap Shout Out Contest gives students an opportunity to win a shout out for their school in the next Week in Rap. Last week, we asked you to imagine your life in ten years and describe it to us. What would have happened in that decade of your life? How would things have changed?
This week’s winner is Cuthbertson High School in Waxhaw, North Carolina. Ninth-grader Emily wrote about her twenty-five-year-old self’s experience working on her master’s degree. Here is an excerpt from “Ten Years Later”:
Ever since she was little, she had wanted to go to Chapel Hill. Both of her parents had graduated from there, and she had literally been “Tar Heel born and Tar Heel bred.” At first like any child, she had bounced from career to career whenever asked “What will you be when you grow up?” Slowly though, she found that she liked children, worked well with other people, and loved learning. By the time she graduated from middle school, she knew that she wanted to graduate from UNC with a masters in education, get married, and become a teacher. She also found that she had a gift for writing, and wrote fanfiction and stories during her spare time. Moving through high school, her dreams broadened, and, knowing that being an ordinary teacher doesn’t pay well, she formed a more definite plan for her life. She was going to get the Morehead to Chapel Hill, get her masters in education, get married, and move to northern South Carolina as to be near her family in NC and yet make $10,000 dollars more as a high school Algebra teacher. On the side, she would write young adult novels, simply for the fun of it.
Well, she had made it this far. All of her hard work in high school had paid off (possibly with the help of the nine AP classes she ended up taking), and she had actually gotten the Morehead scholarship. Continuing to date her steady boyfriend from high school who had made it into UNC as well, she found undergraduate college to be a fun and interesting experience. Though she didn’t make it onto the college cross country team (she wasn’t expecting to), she continued to run every morning. Four years later, both the girl and her boyfriend earned their bachelors degree’s in education, and the same week he proposed. They planned to have their wedding the summer after she got her masters, while he got a job as a kindergarten teacher in a nearby school. She was in her last year now, at 25 years old it had taken her nearly three years to start her all-important thesis.
Congratulations, Cuthbertson High School!
The entries this week were truly incredible—you all have such inspiring goals and so many exciting possibilities in your future! We hope you achieve everything you’re striving for. Here are a few more entries we loved this week.
Right now, I am eleven years old, and I am in the sixth grade. It seems like there are endless jobs to be when I grow up. My goal is to, in 2023, graduate our of a great college like MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Yale or Harvard, and exist as a top student with a degree and a job in mind. I am not exactly sure of what this job will be because I know that with every experience, my dream job will change slightly. Right now, I want to be a robot programmer, a laywer, or add on to the Broadway show Annie that I did in 2012, and be an actress! My goals after that point in time will be to find a job that I love, and settle down in my original home state, Missouri. Also, I want to become a New York Broadway veteran, or a person that has done many, many Broadway shows.
In ten years, I want to help with all of the environmental problems that will affect our world greatly, such as global warming, pollution, animal cruelty, and terrorism. I want our world to be ended with something that we can’t help, not something we can. I also want to be like Malala Yousafzai, and follow her example to help all children, especially girls, be able to receive an education.
— Junah, MS54 in New York, New York.
I am hoping to have a wonderful job as a child psychologist. I would like to see myself as a child psychologist because I want to help children feel better about themselves and help them to feel comfortable about going to school. I want them to get their feelings out about school and home drama. I am willing to stand up for those who come to me. I think I am fit for the job.
I will hopefully attend Ohio State University. I want to attend this school because it is rated top 10 for its psychology program. I also picked this school because it is only 3 hours and 32 minutes from where I live and I want to be able to come home an dvisit easily. They also have a first year experience program, where they give you a warm welcome to the school by helping you out a little bit.
— Makayla, Trimble County Middle School in Bedford, Kentucky
In 10 years, I want to be in college! My goal in life is to become a meteorologist. I have looked deeply into the University of North Carolina in Charlotte and I love their science program! Ten years from now, I hope to be in my 6th year of college pursuing my master’s degree in meteorology. If I go straight in to college after high school, I would be an intern at the National Weather Service chasing my weather dream! If you haven’t already guessed, my favorite movie is Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. My life will be filled with my silly, careless mistakes and regrets, but I have learned to accept that. I’m only in the 8th grade, but I can sit in front of you and act like a science major. Nobody, not even the devil, or my own conscience, can keep me from learning everything I possibly can to help protect people from the danger of weather. Nothing will stop me from being the girl of my dreams.
— Shannon, Oakridge Middle School in Clover, South Carolina
Thank you to everyone who entered this week! Don’t forget to enter this Friday’s Week In Rap Shout-Out Contest for a chance to win a shout out next Friday.