Teen to Adult

 

This week I had planned to write about Independence. That is surely a topic I will post about, just not today!  Somewhere this week I realized I had a much more pressing case to show you.

 

I have a friend, let’s call him Mark.

Mark is currently in the 4th year of an Engineering course in Lisbon, that lasts 5 years, one of the best you can take in Portugal.

Mark is intelligent and is even one year younger than his peers. He never liked to study a lot, but through high school he didn’t need to anyway. Once in college, and coming from a town 400km away from Lisbon, he easily made friends with guys from the same part of Portugal, who took the same train to go home as he did on weekends. These were not ordinary friends, turns out they were two of the best students in the course. They were very intelligent, and to support it they studied enough to achieve top grades at almost every class.

So why am I talking about Mark? You will find out soon enough… Keep reading =)

Somewhere over the second and third year, Mark grew distant to the friends he had made. He was roommate to one of them, but he moved out.  He started partying more, and studying less, but his grades were still good enough to pass classes.

Then, somewhere between the third and fourth year, he got a girlfriend back at home. This should be good news! But as it turns out…

Mark started going home every weekend. It is important to note its very hard for a student from out of town to study when he goes back home, so on weeks with tests/projects to deliver, most students stay in Lisbon to work on the weekend.

Problems that arise from going home every weekend:

• - Much less study and work on difficult weeks.
• - More expenses, and Mark is from a family which struggles a bit in terms of money.
• - Less hanging out with colleagues.

All this versus the so called LOVE.

 

The current situation:

Mark is missing classes to go home on Thursdays,  is starting the week tired by catching a 5 hour bus on Sundays that arrives at Lisbon 5am on Mondays.

Mark is spending more money. Mark complains about his Dad threatening to stop paying for College. Mark is thinking about quitting the course, with more than half the classes passed.

Mark is waiting for the girlfriend to save enough money to move in with her somewhere in Lisbon, while she currently is a waitress at her Dad’s cafe.

 

The future situation:

Mark realizes the way this is going, shifts things up a bit so he can study more, and finishes the course, so he can get a much better job, being able to provide better for his girlfriend and future family.

Mark doesn’t change anything, quits the course or his Dad forces him to quit, struggles to find a low paying job, and with no qualifications keeps struggling for the following years as well.

 

What would you do? What is the underlying problem here? Should he keep the current life he has so he can keep the "love" for his girlfriend? What is a better job at loving her, visiting her every weekend, or missing one or two weekends every month so you can provide a better future for both?

For me, the answer is easy, for him it seems it is as well, but its the opposite of my answer…

 

In the end, it’s decisions like this that define our lives. Therefore, it is in our best interest that we should think about these decisions well.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life regretting a road I took, or one I didn’t take but should have.

 

I sincerely hope you enjoyed this post, as I find it a very intriguing life case that makes me sad to see it unfold everyday. It covers lots of topics that interest me, from love, to money, to independence…

Hope you can learn as much from it as I did!

 

 

João

 

 

This entry was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.