TEEN COLUMN -- Matt Meredith

Matt Meredith

I’m drowning in a lukewarm sea of commitments.

Without a doubt, this is true of too many teenagers these days. The

halls of high school are becoming a ghastly site, with sickly,

sleep-deprived students wearily trudging from AP (Advanced Placement)

this to AP that. So what is the purpose of it all? Why do students

continually subject themselves to difficult classes, physically

exhausting sports and time-consuming activities?

For some, it is done for nothing more than desire. A lot of teens want

to take these classes, play these sports and join these clubs. Every AP

class has a group of enthusiastic students who love the subject. Every

sports team has many dedicated, hard-working, devoted members. Believe it

or not, plenty of kids love calculus, physics or computer science. But

for other students, it is all done for one simple, gloriously abstract

idea: success.

Success is a great buzz word nowadays. From GATE in fourth grade to

honors English in seventh grade to high school, success is the driving

force behind many of today’s newest achievers. It’s why students should

fight for that fifth point, why they should pay hundreds of dollars for

an SAT program, and why they should enroll themselves in classes they

have absolutely no interest in. It’s the single concept that runs many

teenagers’ lives. But what does it mean?

Many self-respecting students would scoff at this question, answering

with a condescending “Ivy League, fame, fortune,� as obvious as if you’d

just asked them the derivative of a polynomial. But success carries

different meanings with different people.

Success, to me, means a lot of things. It means happiness. The primary

condition of leading a successful life is leading a happy life. Students

should do what they want to do, not what they feel they should do. Of

course, this is only applicable to a point: Many people don’t want to

work, but a life without food or shelter is not a happy life, is it?

Another condition of being successful is making your mark in the

world. True success comes from a meaningful life. Different standards

apply to different people, but they apply nonetheless. The feeling of

pride that Michelangelo got when he finished the Sistine Chapel was

nothing more or less than the feeling of pride a mailman can get when he

delivers the last letter of the day.

That is precisely what success is: pride. To be successful is to have

pride in yourself. For some, that takes a Harvard law degree. For others,

it doesn’t take as much. Personally, I wouldn’t mind being a 30-year-old,

poverty-stricken musician renting out a studio apartment in Long Beach.

But that’s just me.

What’s important is that every high school student look from outside

the box, and define his or her own idea of success. Use reason and

independent thought, and decide what direction you want your life to go.

The time is now. Just don’t tell your college counselor.

* MATT MEREDITH is a senior at Newport Harbor High School, where he is

editor-in-chief of the Beacon.