"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

This is a question, everyone is either really annoyed or really excited to be asked. I recently asked 4 of my friends to give an honest opinion on the question, You can find my advice after the responses .

Aahana- Whenever someone used to ask me this question when I was young I would feel happy and I would feel good that they asked me this. I would give some normal childish response. Now when I grew up and I understood how the world is and understood how people are I just wish this question disappears. I never have a good answer and even if I do have an answer, some adults who aren't even close to me get disappointed if I don't say something grand or heroic like a doctor they would give a typical response like " come on you should be something better", and it just gets annoying when someone asks me this, I don't feel like I am in the right age for someone to ask me what I want to be, so I guess it would be so good if they spent time knowing me by asking what my interests are instead of asking me what I want to be, and expect me to answer something which society expects me to.

Rhea- Personally what I feel about this question is that its a pretty common question people ask, at any age below ten, they ask it for fun or to build a conversation but when you start your teen years or are near, people ask it with a completely different intention. It's almost as if they are stressing you out by forcing it on you. If I don't have an answer and tell them I haven't thought much about it; people usually have a mixed reaction. They're like

" It's okay you have time to think about it but please do start thinking about it." It frustrates me and gets me confused about what to think about, the past, present or future since people seem to care about all three of those but of course I can only think of one at a time.

Even if we do have a dream we want to achieve, at the end of the day it's less of us telling people what we want to be, and more of them advising us of what to be. It limits us.

It's really hard to find open-minded people who believe you can achieve anything and don't judge you so I don't find myself comfortable with talking about my dream, especially with adults except one or two of them. I do definitely think if we have a dream, we can achieve it however we tend to get demotivated. I hope people get less judgemental so that we can have a comfortable environment.

Vidita - since I am currently going into my teens it would be common for adults to ask "Hey what do you want to be when you grow up?" but they don't realize the amount of pressure they put, and if we don't have an answer ready they make us feel bad by saying "you don't know what you'll be when you grow up?" it gives you a lot of anxiety, they start asking this from an early age, and don't realize how annoying it gets each time when someone asks me this question I have to go deep in thought cause currently we are children we have so many hobbies and we can't pick one and we are still developing different kinds of interests. So when someone asks you this you can't just decide one from many on the point, when someone asks me this anxiety hits and I feel worried. So many people have decided this which also makes me feel left out and rushed.

Anahita-

When I am asked what I want to be when I grow up I feel pressurized. I feel very stressed as people can be very judgemental on this topic they can also get you confused by giving their opinions. There are many people who still think in a very old fashioned way. I feel stressed whenever I face this as everyone has expectations.

My opinion and advice-

Like many other teenager,s I feel very annoyed andpressurizedd when someone asks me this, most of the time (especially at this age) people ask you this mostly to give you advice or judge you. We usually don't realize how such a common and easy question has such a big impact on a teen.

When you are an adult people don't casually ask you what you want to do in the next ten years and then judge you and give you advice on what you "should" do. Yet somehow for teenagers, this is probably one of the most common questions asked to start a casual conversation.

my advice is to first know that you are not alone in this, there are so many teenagers who haven't decided what they want to be or are judged for what they want to be. It is completely normal for this to happen, it is completely absurd to ask a child or teen what they want to do as an adult and tell them what they should do afterwards, society needs to stop normalizing it. Second is to be confident about it maybe knowing that other people haven't decided might help with that. Being confident about this is definitely a very hard thing to do, even more when the adults and friends you are closest to are judging you. Being confident over here does not necessarily mean fighting with everyone who judges you, you aren't always in a situation where that can happen for example if a teacher asks you this you cant always reply . Being confident here means reminding yourself that it's okay, and be kind to yourself. You have to stop getting affected by what the world thinks the people who don't believe in you currently might be the same people cheering you on afterwards, so the best thing to do is create a shield between you and other people, the shield can as strong or as weak, depending on how much you believe in yourself.

Create the highest grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe - Oprah Winfrey

picture credits- Anne Magill