I have been told I have a passion for swimming because I am a competitive swimmer and spend much of my day in the water.

I have also been told I have a passion for writing because of my interest in journalism, poetry and short stories.

I have heard the word “passion” used many times in my life.

Every time the word “passion” has come up, it has always been people deciding what I am passionate about based on my habitual actions. But, how can they know what I’m passionate about if I haven’t yet figured it out for myself?

My parents and teachers have always told me to find something I’m passionate about, something I can focus my life around  and, eventually, base my college applications upon. High school, supposedly, is the place to do it. People have made finding a passion a goal that one must reach in high school. But really, that goal is both unrealistic and misleading.

High schoolers should not force themselves to discover a passion. High school can help people make more sense of the confusing and chaotic world we live in, but if students all stress about finding a passion to write about on college applications, that innate enthusiasm really is not inside us at all.

To me, a passion is something that instigates intense desire and enthusiasm, something that comes from within and is, in some sense, an intrinsic part of a person.

Before coming into high school, I believed writing was something that excited me — thinking maybe I could be enthusiastic about it and, maybe, it could be my personal passion. But I was told to keep an open mind going into high school because apparently everything changes in this new phase of life.

In my freshman year, biology intrigued me, which was new because I had never been all that interested in middle school science. I tricked myself, and I began believing that biology could be the passion I was told to seek.

Due to years of conditioning from adults saying that I had to find my passion in high school, I thought that it was my duty to embrace “this biology thing.” I told my parents it interested me, which excited my mom, who had wanted me to be a doctor my entire life. I even researched potential medical or biological careers I was interested in.

The guise of passion and my lack of one frustrated me because I thought that once I figured a passion out, everything, including my future, would fall into place.  

I was telling myself to reject the side of me that loved writing. In my mind, allowing myself to indulge that side would take away from the side that liked biology and would somehow be a betrayal to my newfound “passion.”

But the more I did, the more confused I got. It was as if I had to choose what I wanted to say I was passionate about rather than have a passion coming from inside of me, and it led me to wonder: why couldn’t I just be passionate about both writing and biology?

What I realized was I had been tricking myself into a new “passion” because I thought it was what I was supposed to do in high school, not because it came from within. I thought that if I didn’t fully embrace biology I would be a step behind on the road to self-discovery that everyone supposedly experiences in high school.

Yet, at the end of the day, high school is supposed to be about exposure to new ideas, concepts and perspectives. It’s up to us to let it sink in.

Because of its structure of required classes or credits, high school allows students to learn their personal likes and dislikes, but a feeling as strong as a passion is hard to come about.

It’s unrealistic to find a certain “passion” in high school because every new thing seems to be a potential passion, leaving students more confused than when they started. Rather, high school should be a period of trial and error, figuring out what works and what does not.

There are so many more real-world experiences waiting for teenagers after high school or even college. These life-changing or re-evaluating moments that actually determine our actual passions can come at any time on the path of life.

At the end of the day, it’s hard enough to traverse this vast world with the confidence of an adult, let alone a teenager with so much more to explore.