When I was in primary school, I was following the Moral Education lessons. Well in fact, when I was 6, my mom had let me choose wether I'd rather follow the Christian Religion lessons or the Moral Education lessons. I had chosen Religion for some reason, and after a year I quickly realised it wasn't for me and switched to Moral Education.
And just like Religions, Moral Education has a ceremony you can do when you're twelve, this is equivalent to your Confirmation for Christians.
In my case, this secular ceremony was multi-school. All kids from schools around town would get on stage and we'd dance, say speeches etc. At some point during the ceremony, you were given a mic and had to come to the front of the stage to say "When I grow up, I want to be...".
During the repetition, I remember seeing all the kids saying one by want what they wanted to be, and then it was my turn and I got stuck. I was given the mic and asked my teacher "What do I say if I want to be multiple things?". I don't remember exactly what she answered, but the end result was that I listed many different paths, the main one being "Archaeologist" which for some reason made a lot of the other kids laugh. I imagine it's because it was so different from the generic "firefighters" and "doctors", but it didn't bother me.
Then time passed, and six years later it was now time that I actually chose what I wanted to study. For months, I couldn't decide, I hadn't changed since I was a kid, there were still so many things I wished I could do, even more than six years ago. What had changed though was my relationship to school.
I had just spent the last twelve years of my life being bored to death every single day. Listening to teachers telling me either things I already knew or things I didn't care about. Of course there were some teachers I loved and some subjects I found genuinely interesting, but overall, school was something I was incredibly eager to quit.
So I thought carefully about many possibilities, I still wanted to be an Archaeologist, but had been told many times that it was difficult to find a secure career there. I thought about bio-chemistry, but wasn't ready for university at all, I couldn't see myself studying everyday for five to seven more years. I briefly dreamed about a more manual job like Ceramicist or Furniture Maker but felt like I had no competency doing something with my hands cause I was too clumsy. I ended up choosing 2D animation, I kinda liked drawing and I'd always loved watching cartoons and wished I could do them myself.
I tried to pass the exams at an art school, but with my limited skills and places being numbered I was of course rejected. That lead me to try to find another school that would accept me and that had some 2D animation in their program, it wasn't as good of a school as the one I had applied to but I thought it might be good experience to try the entry exams again next year.
The courses in this other school also included web development. In the very first lesson, the teacher showed us that by writing a few incantations at the computer, you could display things in any color, size, font or whatever you could imagine! I was hooked, and changed my plans of trying art school again to learn web development.
For the next three years, I studied and worked hard to become as good as I could. My idea was simple, I hated school so much that I needed to be the best to make sure I got a job straight out of it. There was no way I could have studied anymore. My plan worked and I got a job right away, and having a job changed one enormous thing in my life, after 20 years, I finally had time!
That's the one thing that is so different between school and adult life, you can do whatever you want after your job. When I was in school, a good chunk of the time outside of it was spent on homework, studying or working on projects. This gave me no time to discover myself and learn about things I liked and things I disliked.
This time allowed me to discover that I didn't actually like drawing, but what I liked was the ability to create something out of my imagination. This time allowed me to learn about society and dream about the world I wish to live in and what I can do to get it there. This time allowed me to learn about other living things, and discover how much I loved the world I live in and how wonderful and precious life is. This time allowed me to actually forge my personality and having strong lines for who I wish to be and who I don't want to be.
Of course this is an ongoing process, and it will be for all my life, but at least now I have foundations to build on. I have foundations to make my life choices on. It's only now that I have actually had time to live and experience things that I am ready to decide what I want to be later. And now that I am finally ready to make decisions that will shape my life, it's too late, I'm stuck with the decisions I made when everything was still foggy in my head. Of course you could argue that you always have the choice, you can start studies again or pivot your career somehow. But this costs money, money that I don't have, and this same problem I had at 12 still persists, there are so many things I wish to be and I won't be allowed to try them all.
But if I step back just a little, asking a twelve or an eighteen year old what they want to be later is an insane question. How am I supposed to reply to you when I have experienced absolutely nothing? And even then, even if I had miraculously chosen the right path at eighteen, I was so not ready for university and working hard like I am now. As I said, I had just spent the last twelve years being bored, I was only looking forward to escape, looking forward to live something, and I was asked to keep going for even longer.
I find it weird and unacceptable that as a society, we don't give ourselves time. I don't understand how we expect children to make decisions that will impact their entire life, I don't understand why trying isn't an option, why spending time discovering oneself isn't rewarded.
Worse yet, I'm part of the privileged ones, some people don't even get to choose, because before they worry about what they want to be, they have to worry about what they are going to eat tonight. And somehow, all of this is considered perfectly normal...