Home

Steamboat Springs — Recently, my planner has been overflowing out of the lines with my assignments scribbled all across the pages. I'm being swallowed up by school right now, desperately trying to continue my extracurriculars while juggling homework and trying to occasionally find some free time.

Although I'm often running around like a chicken with my head cut off, there are definitely a lot of skills I've gained from my high school experience. I feel strongly that these insights will guide me in my future.

I've learned to look at the world with a new perspective in order to gain understanding about diversity and different cultures. Often, it's important to keep an open mind. Keeping yourself open to new opinions, ideas and experiences can help you become a more well-rounded, sympathetic person.

I'm also able to think for myself. I can take an idea and pull new meaning out of it, using the spark to derive new self-fulfillment.

I recently finished reading a book called "Happier" by Tal Ben-Shahar, a professor at Harvard University. This novel was a guide - not necessarily a direct roadmap to ultimate happiness, but simply a basic outline of what happiness is and how we strive to attain it.

It seems that these days with school and work we have gotten into a rat race, where we set goals, thinking that once we have achieved them, we finally will be happy. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Those victories, might give us temporary joy, but they do not give us eternal happiness.

School often gets teenagers into this mindset. We must try to take pleasure from the present as well as gaining self-fulfillment on the journey to our deepest dreams.

For me, the easiest way to obtain present happiness is to feel gratification toward the people I love and the possessions I have. This internal peace leads to my happiness, both in the present and in the future, as well.

Even though many teenagers see high school as a burden, it gives us motivation to reach for our goals and stretch ourselves to gain success. It has many ups and downs, but it is a crucial factor to determine who we will become and what we will accomplish to bring meaning into our lives in the future.

Paula Ninger is a senior at Steamboat Springs High School. This is her fourth year writing for Teen Style.