17 BY 17

So, senior year calls for a Mentoring Project. While most kids in my class are doing service projects and build water wells in third world countries, I knew something like that just wasn't for me. Not saying I wouldn't love to do something like that but, becoming a devoted humanitarian has never been an aspiration of mine. I’m not the most outgoing person, and well, I’m pretty introverted. I prefer to write my feelings instead of discuss them out loud. What I wanted from my mentoring project was the ability to ~develop myself~ if that makes sense. I didn’t have the idea to start blogging until one day in my psychology class.

We were discussing motivation and identity/self-achievement and our teacher had us do a personal inventory. Once we had answered all 100+ questions, we were asked to tally them up in a specific order that would give us a total raw score, which we would then use to see to which one of the four subsequent divisions we belonged to. There was identity achievement, in which a person had actively explored possibilities but eventually committed to one - this was the most stable. There was identity moratorium, in which a person is actively exploring, has made no commitment, and is in a limbo type state of confusion. According to our teacher, Moratorium should be brief and never permanent. Another was identity foreclosure which is when a person has made a commitment without active exploration - usually when a child adopts a parent’s views. And the last stage was identity diffusion in which there is no commitment, but there is no exploration either. Of course, my score landed me smack in the middle of Moratorium - even the name for it is unpleasant, ~moratorium~. Not enjoying being categorized as 'in a state of limbo' and 'confused', I decided it was time for me to do something about it.

Thus, the blog and the 17 Experiences were born. Being a year behind everyone in my grade, I will be 17 when I graduate high school, not 18. When I sat down with my counselor to discuss what I could do for a mentor project, I basically unloaded on her how stressful I found the process of settling with one choice and pretty much rambled for a good 20 minutes about what I love to do. But, being the awesome counselor that she is, she listened patiently and then took everything I said into consideration, and we came up with the idea of the blog. This way, I don't have to compromise and settle on only one of all my current interests like reading, writing, and photography, and I will also explore new things I might never have considered doing before. So, my plan for the next year is to attempt as many new things as I can, a sort of self-discovery journey. There are certain things I’m so adamant about hating, but yet I have never even given them a chance *cough* roller coasters *cough*to see if I truly will hate them as much as I believe I do. Hence the title "17 By 17" - I hope to have 17 new experiences under my belt by the time I actually turn 17, and officially graduate from high school. 

I have some ideas for what I wish to do in the span of this year but for the most part, I plan to play it by ear and most importantly, have fun blogging about it in the process! Basically, I already know what my likes are, but I hope to maybe lessen my dislikes and broaden my views by becoming more open to new things. This past year was rocky, but now that I have this blog as an outlet, I plan on making next year nothing like last! Hope you stick around and follow me as I actively push more and more out of my comfort zone and experience new and exciting things!

Just think of this as a High School Bucket List, of sorts. 

Each experience will recieve a link copied to this page for easy access :)

Experience #1 - College Visits

Experience #2 - Uganda Project

Experience #3 - Summer Programs
Experience #4 - Book Club
Experience #5 - NaNoWriMo
Experience #6 - 52 Project
Experience #7 - When In...
Experience #8 - What Did You Wear Today?
Experience #9 - Taking Stock
Experience #10 - License
Experience #11 - Roller Coaster
Experience #12 - Solo in NYC
Experience #13 - A Prom Story 
Experience #14 - College Decision College Decision v.2
Experience #15 - Meaning of Life
Experience #16 - Sky Diving
Experience #17 - Graduation!