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Miah Smith

Longhurst

ENGL-1010

7 February 2022

Through the Looking Glass

Education is essential in various aspects, and my friends and stepsiblings are the ones

who made me realize just how important it is to me. I understand that college isn’t for everyone

and not everyone needs to go to college to be successful. Some people are very creative and can

start their own business or get a job that doesn’t require a degree. But having a degree is very

helpful when trying to get a job. I have always been told that the person who has the degree is

more likely to get the job rather than the person without one. I’m not the biggest fan of school,

but I have grown to like and appreciate it more and more. I know that I am very lucky to be able

to go to college.

Most of my friends and I are going to college, except for a few of them, including my

stepsiblings. Most of my closest friends are going to college except two of them, Kenna and

Hailey. Kenna and Hailey aren’t going to college, and they are the ones who have shown me

how important education is. Along with my stepsiblings who also aren’t going to college. Kenna,

Hailey, and my stepsiblings also don’t have jobs. Them not doing anything with their lives

makes me feel bad for them because they have no goals in life and aren’t going to be able to live

in the real world. None of them care about their future or how they’re going to make a living.

I have always been worried about my future and how I am going to be able to support

myself, and all of them could care less about what is going to happen with their lives. My

stepmom doesn’t push my siblings to go to college, so they just do what they want. My
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stepbrother is 20 and he doesn’t go to school, he doesn’t work, and he doesn’t even have his

driver’s license. My stepsister is the same as my stepbrother but the only thing that is different is

that she has her driver’s license.

Both of my stepsiblings lay in their beds all day and jsit on their phones. They get on

Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Call of Duty, Netflix, and the app they are on the most is TikTok.

They hardly leave their rooms. The only time they leave their rooms is to get food or go to their

dad’s house. Other than that, they stay in the basement. I always try to get them to do things with

me like, go to the mall or the park, but they always say no. All they want to do is nothing.

Kenna and Hailey are the same as my stepsiblings. They don’t care about a thing in the

world. They party every day and don’t worry about their futures. Being around them makes me

feel like a bum and I don’t like it because I have goals and care about my future. They drink on

the weekdays, weekends, mornings, and nights. They get hotel rooms any day of the week and

drink vodka and other alcoholic drinks. Which I find astonishing because I just don’t understand

how they don’t care about their futures. This makes me not want to be around them because I

don’t want them to drag me down with them.

I know that they don’t have to go to college to be successful, but they don’t even have

jobs. If they at least had jobs and were working full time then that would be a different story, but

they aren’t doing anything with their lives, unlike my other friends. Three of my close friends all

have scholarships for the University of Utah, another one of my friends has a scholarship to

Dixie State, and my other friend has a scholarship to Utah Valley. And all of them also have jobs

while going to school. All my other friends besides Kenna and Hailey are successful and have

goals for their lives. I just wish they had goals because if they had goals then they would be the

type of people I want to be around.

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Kenna and Hailey, only care about partying. They always try to get me and my other

friends that are in college to skip school, party on the weekday, and skip work. I hate that

because it is so irresponsible, and we are all adults and need to grow up. They don’t care if we

skip work because they don’t know what it’s like to have responsibilities.

The rest of my friends and I have things we must pay for. I must pay for a lot of my own

things. Once I turned 18 my parents made me pay for my things. I pay for my car, my gas, my

clothes, etc. When I started paying for my own things, I realized that things aren’t cheap in the

real world. This makes me not even able to imagine how expensive things are once you move out

of your parents’ house, for example, a house, buying a car, and other big things like that. Kenna

and Hailey don’t have to worry about paying for anything because their parents pay for

everything for them. I feel like they would care more about their futures if they had things they

actually to paid for.

In high school, Kenna would always convince our friends and I to skip school. We would

never do our homework and it made me so stressed, anxious, and feel guilty. Before I met

Kenna, I never skipped class and I always did my homework on time, she was and is a bad

influence for me and the rest of my friends along with Hailey. I don’t want to be insensitive, but

Kenna didn’t even graduate high school on time. This isn’t a bad thing, but high school isn’t hard

to just pass, all you need is a D. But instead of her doing her homework just to at least pass she

would just lay in bed all day and not get on her online class to do homework. She would wait

until the last day to turn everything in, and then not finish anything for her classes.

Kenna’s parents, Hailey’s parents, and my siblings’ parents don’t care if they go to

school or have a job. My entire life my parents didn’t give me an option to go to college it was

always “when you go to college” not “if you go to college”. They told me that I had to go to
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college and if I wasn’t going to college then I would have to pay rent and work full time. I am

going to college, and I still have a job. I am very grateful that my parents pushed me to go to

college because I want to be successful and live a successful life. I don’t want to live a life where

I am living paycheck to paycheck. I don’t want to worry about if I’ll have enough money to do

what I want.

Throughout my experience with school and watching my friends’ and siblings’ lives sort

of go-to crap I have realized that I want to better my life with education. Being friends with these

people has helped to define how I see myself as a learner because oftentimes when I would miss

class in high school, I would regret it because I missed all the material for that day. I know that I

am a visual learner and I need to be taught something before I can just do it, which is what I

would have to do if I missed class. This made me recognize that I need to be focused, present

and motivated when I am learning. Very regularly I would feel unmotivated in school and not

willing to try and do my best to learn, do homework, and succeed. This was my rock bottom

point; the time I realized that I had a bad attitude towards school, I immediately needed to make

a change.

I am grateful I was able to have these experiences because I was able to see the value in

school and have more gratitude towards my own lifestyle even though sometimes, I feel like I

am struggling and don’t have it all together but then I just remember about all the times I would

feel anxious and scared for my future, and I am happy to recognize that I have grown and

become a better version of myself.