While in school, we are expected to organize our future careers and we are told to do it in a way that seems “realistic”…why? Teenage years are a prime time for creating your plans for the future and determining how you want to live your life when you graduate high school. Why should we limit our biggest dreams because we’re convinced that we don’t have potential to achieve them? I wanted to go out and ask a few students about their “wildest dreams” for the future, no matter how unrealistic it may seem because it’s important to be a little spontaneous when pondering your future, and it’s a lot of fun too!

I asked 10th grader, Melody Goto what her wildest dream is and she says that she would want to be casted as Eponine in a Broadway production of Les Miserables. Freshman, Evan Miller would like to work a bit more behind the scenes someday and be a full time chef. Someday he may even want to own his own restaurant! He has a passion for cooking and he hopes to be pursuing this passion in the future. Ciana Lee shared her dream of hopefully becoming a princess! She hopes to end up like Duchess Meghan and live a normal life and one day get swept up by a prince and living a royal life! She also dreams to be able to go on this journey hand-in-hand with her best friend Faith! Most of the dreams that I recorded seem to have to do with a future career, but I found a few that went a little beyond. Kim Cooper shared with me that her dream is to live in a home on top of a mountain. She is extremely fond of the beauty that an astounding sunrise and sunset bring, so she would like the best possible view that she can get. Another student, Deb Almeida has a dream that I found pretty interesting. Deb dreams that in the future, she will be living in a house located in an isolated valley somewhere in Scotland! She wants a very distant life to be on her own and dedicate her time to tending to the sheep that she owns and cares for.

While it was so much fun to go and listen to students tell me their fantasies for their lives, I wanted to dig into the minds of Tuscarora teachers and see what their wildest dreams were! I asked ceramics/social studies teacher Mr. Wagner what he dreamed of doing when he was younger and he wanted to pursue his passion for art. While he loves teaching others about a part of his life that he loves so much, he’s always wanted to make art a full-time thing! Being a potter and selling and sharing his art sounds perfect to Mr. Wagner. Another teacher that is also sharing their passion by teaching is English teacher Ms. Tornello, she has always dreamed of being a full-time writer. She wanted her entire life to be based around what she loves most, reading and writing and this definitely isn’t too far off from where she is now. One response that I found intriguing was psychology and history teacher, Mr. Zitrick’s fascinating dream of becoming a fighter pilot. He says that it sounds “awesome” and it’s something that has caught his attention in the past.

Listening to these students and teachers explain their life passions and dreams to me brought me to a very optimistic lesson. This question was meant to be completely for fun and an opportunity to dig into the spontaneous minds of students and teachers, but it was actually a lot more. It may sound cheesy, but I feel like these dreams are completely achievable and fairly reachable. Not every aspect of every single one of course, but there are levels of possibility in each of these dreams. I really hope that reading about the dreams of teachers and students around Tuscarora has inspired you to step out and think spontaneously sometimes and reach for your dreams! It’s worth a try.