Senior

A high school senior, just to clarify. Generally a young adult, about to be thrust into the adulting world, and does not feel anywhere near prepared.

Me. A high school senior. Fucking terrified. I don’t plan on going to college because the only thing I would go to college for would be a psychology degree. Psychology degrees get people literally no where. Every person I have happened upon that has gotten any sort of psychology degree are no working in places that have nothing to do with said degree. i.e. teaching math, working at a gas station, and working at flowerama. And personally, I don’t want to go into debt just to add a line of words to my resume and probably end up in the same job I would have been in anyways.

SO. Because of my decision to go to college, and my parents decision to not support me if I don’t, I have to have a new place to move into by my eighteenth birthday, aka two days after I graduate.

This is terrifying. First I have to find an apartment that I can afford and yet is not a literal dump. After that I have to contact the company that owns said apartments and hope that they are willing to even consider renting to a soon to be eighteen year old. Actually, backtracking, I need this apartment in Milwaukee because I am going to move in with a friend that is going to a Milwaukee college for free. So they really have to be willing to consider renting to two eighteen year olds. After that I need to set up a time to see said lucky apartment(s) and then take off a weekend of work to drive all the way over to Wisconsin. After that I have to hope that who ever these people are choose to rent to me, a soon to be eighteen year old with no credit score and no adult willing to sign the lease with her, over some probably much more ‘adult’ adults.

If I am lucky enough to get that near miracle situation, the next most terrifying thing to homelessness is not having any freaking money. I have been working ever since I turned fourteen, I just got a second job this year, but I have horrible spending habits. I only have $3,800 saved. I want to have $5,000 by the time I graduate. This is still a horribly small amount of money. There will be many one time expenses that I don’t even want to try calculated out right now. I don’t even know if I’m going to be allowed to keep the car I have now or if I’m going to have to buy another. I’ll have to pay for fees and deposits for the apartment. The biggest thing I am terrified of is running out of money before I get another job. It could takes months before some place hires me. Right now I’m pinning my hopes on Nordstrom and then my next choice will be applying to gas stations. Those are my options because of the $11 hourly wage. If I do run out of money the only thing I can think of going to is credit cards. Which, yes, I am well aware is pretty much the worst choice possible, but it’s better than being homeless.

Going back to my best friend, I love her to death, but she doesn’t have a job. I can’t guarantee that she will be able to pay her part of the rent every month, even though we plan on renting a one bedroom apartment to save some money. And to add to that, she is just as horrible at spending too much money as I am.

I am scared to death of being an adult. I don’t know how to do taxes! I don’t want to get audited! And I definitely won’t be able to afford hiring someone to do them for me. I don’t know how to sign up for insurance. I don’t know how to switch my cars license plate from Iowa to Wisconsin. I don’t know how much I’m going to need for groceries each month. I don’t know how to get a new doctor. I don’t know where I’m going to go to get my contacts from. I am so scared. And none of these things are going to be explained to me. I’m going to have to deal with it on my own, like an adult. I feel like a scared little child always on the verge of crying and I hate it.

Going back to the now. While I’m panicking about all of these future issues, I still have classes. Classes with projects, finals, and homework all overdue or about to be. First things first, I need to graduate high school and it is an honest fear that  might not because instead of focusing on getting everything done in my language arts classes and getting the credits that I need to graduate, I am usually out crying and trying to forget for just a few minutes about all the problems that are staring in the face and waiting for me. The due date for figuring out my life is my birthday and I already know I’m going to miss that one too.