So much choice means decisions have to be made

‘OH, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful,’ said someone once. There is the occasional day when I stare wistfully into the distance and wonder what it would be like to be able to stand up without groaning and to be able to sleep until lunchtime. Those are most often when I’m watching sport and wondering what might have been had I been a little more disciplined, trained and practiced a little harder, and not spent so much time, umm, let’s say in the pub. I’m pretty sure my sporting career would have progressed no further than it did, which was not very far at all, but there’s something about Olympic season that makes many of us wonder. I had a skateboard when skateboarding was first a thing and never had an inkling that someone would one day get an Olympic medal for it. Pretty much the most frightened I have ever been has been on the two terrible occasions I went rock climbing. Clinging by my fingertips to a freezing cold and very wet and sheer cliff was not my idea of my fun, but that speed climbing up an artificial wall with a safety harness looked altogether a different thing. If only I had known! On the other hand I’m pretty certain the world was a simpler place when I was a youth. I have been thinking about that this week, as next week is the dreaded day when the exam results arrive. Of course this year there were no exams which makes the whole thing slightly odd, as does the fact that many youngsters have spent a large proportion of the last year and a half in their rooms. Of course it is a teenage rite of passage to spend a lot of time in your room (alongside sleeping forever, general surliness, acne and blushing) but the equation changes considerably when school or college is all in your room too. Getting exam results without doing exams is unusual, yes, but hopefully will lead to some radical change in education that will focus more on educating and less on grades. But the real test for today’s teens is choice. I’m sure my options as I emerged from ten years at boarding school were quite simple, go to university or get a job. For me getting a job at that point meant the farm or the army, and I’d shifted enough bales and endured enough institutional discipline so it was mindbroadening higher education for me. I’m also pretty sure that choices of what to ‘read’ at University were also simpler. The Boy and I have spent a couple of hours this week having a look at what’s next for him. The choice is quite fantastic. Whatever direction you want to head in is pretty much ok. Sound good? Well it is, the opportunities are endless. Unless you have absolutely no idea what direction you want to be heading in. I can’t imagine anyone knows they want to be a dentist aged eighteen, but maybe they do. One piece of advice we’ve gleaned is to decide ‘the way in which you prefer to learn’. What if you don’t know that either? I narrowed down The Boy’s choices to a series of options, after which, having carefully considered them all, we concluded he really doesn’t know what to do. I think the last 20 years of my professional career have been just about making decisions, so I’ve become decisive, and also used to the truths that any decision is better than no decision, and you can always change your mind. That’s easy for me to say, but for the young decisions seem irrevocable, and a year seems like a very long time indeed. The decision will have to be made. I’ve suggested the army or navy in the hope that this will prompt a decision. Let’s see what the weekend brings.