Today in America vast concourses of youth are flocking to our colleges, eager for something, just what they do not know.
When I started Teach For America, I wasn't trying to come up with an idea that would change the world. I was trying to solve a problem much closer to home: I was a senior in college, and I had no idea what I was going to do with my life!
I definitely want to have kids one day. That's something I've always wanted since as long as I could remember. And the older I get, the more I'm like, "I'm too young!"
It is not the young man who should be considered fortunate but the old man who has lived well, because the young man in his prime wanders much by chance, vacillating in his beliefs, while the old man has docked in the harbor, having safeguarded his true happiness.
How can a young person learn whether he chose the correct way? He thinks he has a special idea, and then he discovers that he is completely inappropriate for it.
I think it's unreasonable to expect kids at 17 to know what they want to do with the rest of their lives. And actually, I guess I had a desire to be an artist, and I did enroll in art school out of high school.
It's really hard coming of age in today's society, where society wants you to make the decision of what you want to do with your life by the time you're 16 years old. Most kids don't know what they want to do. How could they? They haven't lived in the real world yet.
I wish I knew at 14 not to put much thought into what other people my age said to me, cause we were all looking for the answers. So I wish I knew that other people really don't know any more than you do!
I studied law, economy, international relations, communications, in order to find what I would do. It's the hardest thing, being 17 and trying to find what to do in life. You've explored so little. I'm lucky: My parents let me explore.
Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
I was 19, and I thought I should settle down and get a real job, and what was I doing living this dream world?
Our chaotic economic situation has convinced so many of our young people that there is no room for them. They become uncertain andrestless and morbid; they grab at false promises, embrace false gods and judge things by treacherous values. Their insecurity makes them believe that tomorrow doesn't matter and the ineffectualness of their lives makes them deny the ideals which we of an older generation acknowledged.
When I was young I felt really overwhelmed and confused by the desire not to end up in an office, doing something I didn't believe in.
I know a lot of people my age are still trying to figure out what to do, and I consider myself lucky that I can make a living doing something that I truly enjoy.
I was a confused young man. I didn't know what I wanted to be.
It wasn't that expectations changed. But [teens] went from general expectations of success to having no idea of the right thing to do. In the '60s there was a strong prejudice against careerism. We were self-indulgent and self-destructive.
The only reason I got into stand-up was because my brother told me to. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I was 17 and my brother went to a comedy club and he said - you can do that.
As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excuse me or assure me I wasn't the only one, that might confirm an identity I was unhappily piecing together.
I don't think there was any point where I was like, 'I want to be an actor for the rest of my life.' The nice thing about being a kid is you don't have to make those decisions. Then all of a sudden, you blink, and you're 18.
I wouldn't have been able to go to drama school when I was 19. I don't think I was even conscious of life... I was like a zombie. But when I finished uni' I just realised... just go and do it, stop being a knob.
Many people in their teens wonder about these big questions - what's the meaning of life, what are we doing here - then somewhere in their 20s, they seem to say, 'I'll just get married. I'll just have kids. I'll get back to that later.' But they never do. For me, it kept boiling.
I think when you are young and you don't really know what you want in life, you can commit to something and think at the time it is right.
I wanted to be a baseball player, naturally, but I wasn't good enough. I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. I just had a kind of energy, I was a fairly happy kid.
What strikes me as most significant is that young people everywhere in India are anxious to do something. But I have also felt they are not quite clear in their mind as to what they should do.
Today's youth have been cast in a condition of liminal drift, with no way of knowing whether it is transitory or permanent.
