At the end of this year I don't know what I am going to do. As all of my friends go off to college and university, or to work I still haven't decided. I know my father would be thrilled if I signed up for Nipissing or Georgian because they are schools that are nice and close to home; he hasn't seemed to realize that he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of making me stay in Muskoka past graduation. I did not want to come here in the first place, I do not want to be here and I sure don't plan on delaying my inevitable departure. But I haven't told him that I don't think I want to go to school next year. Not that I don't ever want to go to college or university, but realistically I am an extremely lazy teenager with almost no motivation for school work. I have a work ethic, I do well at work and I learn fast but when it comes to school I just don't seem to have the effort. I can't seem to will myself to do the work. I sit down at my computer with no programs open but Microsoft word, nothing around me, my iPod safely in my bedroom, and I begin. I will begin to type, anywhere from the first sentence to the first page. If I am lucky my concentration will last for the whole assignment but I am rarely that lucky. Normally, something I type will remind me of something I once read in a book (I've read a lot of books), or something that a friend was talking about, or something I meant to tell my sister for her english paper, or something that my brother asked me about, or something I watched on TV or in a Movie... It goes on and on.

It's not that I don't realize that I'm only screwing myself over. I fully realize that with my grades I will never be accepted to any school, for anything. I know that I need to go to college or university in order to make something of myself. I know that I can't work at Boston Pizza for the rest of my life if I intend to afford my lifestyle. I know that everyday I miss is another day I will be back at school. I know I'm a spoiled brat who is taking the wonderful oppurtunities provided to her for granted. I do realize these things. I just can't seem to care. It's not even that, I don't think. I do care what happens to me, and about school and grades and college. I'm amazingly lazy. I don't know where my work ethic has gone because believe it or not, I used to have one. I used to hand assignments in early, and would never dream of missing a homework question. I have a good mind, and I'm sure I have some talent. It seems that I'm old enough to know better, but young enough not to care.

I have a plan though, that I've been formulating over the past few weeks. I haven't figured out the logistics of it, but I'm thinking of going on a sort of missions trip next year. There are many organizations I'm looking at, and I think it would be good for me. I think that spending a few months helping out kids from broken families in impoverished countries might make me get my act together and appreciate what I have. But that's not the only reason I am going. That's not even the main reason. I want to go and help people. I like helping people, and I want to experience another culture. One of the organizations, Canada World Youth, offers a 6 month program that involves you and a partner from another country being paired up as part of a larger team. The first 3 months is spent in a part of Canada that you don't live in, where you help disadvantaged Canadians. The second half of the program is spent in your partner's home country, where yu help our some of their fellow citizens who are impoverished. I need to research it more, but I think that one of the programs could be a good thing for me, and solve my dilemma of what to do next year.