Do you want an honest answer, or something that isn't depressing? Happy answer: High school sucks, you get a lot more freedom to be yourself in college. Teenagers are the worst. If you want the truth, read on. Basically, modern capitalist society has placed enough of a focus on money and materialism that the pressure to get a job that provides stability is difficult to resist. Truth is, most of the time you can't get by in America by just following your dreams if you want to live comfortably. Even worse, everyone resents that system, so they try to stop you if you start to break out because they don't want anyone being free if they can't be free. We're all slaves to a need for the illusion of stability. Also, it's not killing the teenager. By the time they're teenagers, most people's individuality is already gone. Either way, if you honestly wanted to go do something outlandish and different, everyone would laugh you down, and chances are you would let them because peer pressure is an immense force that's difficult to resist. Especially because most people are validated by the opinions of those around them. Even in college, you'll be picking a major for a career path that already exists and usually is by no means exactly what you want. So yeah, life sucks. You want to do something else, learn to internally validate yourself so that you don't care what people think, realize that there's no such thing as true stability, and be willing to sacrifice material comfort to do what you want. You also need to be open to any possibility in order to make that happen. If it requires moving to Tibet, so be it.
