This year of my life has been extremely daunting.

This year of my life has been extremely daunting. The various decisions I have had to think about such as whether I want to do an apprenticeship or go to university, coinciding with school work, maintaining a social life and my own hobbies has been no less than a massive struggle.  

There have been days I wanted to stop thinking about what is to come and freeze the world momentarily just to get a moment to breathe. But it is okay to feel uncertain about the future. If we knew everything that is to come, nothing would be exciting anymore. What we need to learn is how to cope with the anxieties that come with decision making and entering new stages of life. It is easy to say ‘You need to be confident’ to yourself or a friend, but carrying it through is where you encounter difficulty. There are days where I don’t feel like I have done my best, or that I am not good enough to go to a certain university. It is human to doubt yourself. However, as long as you continue believing in yourself, believing you are worthy or getting a job at that firm or an apprenticeship in that university and work hard to get yourself there, insecurity should ward away.

You have to remind yourself it is never too late. There will always be opportunities for you to be able to do whatever you see yourself doing as long as you go for them. Even if you believe you haven’t done as well as you might have hoped at school, there is no harm in looking. No single person in the world gained perfect grades and created the perfect life following that. Most of them kept optimistic, applied to jobs and schools and worked extremely hard to get where they are now in life. I do say you should remain optimistic, however also be slightly realistic. There is no point in applying to somewhere you have absolutely no chance of getting into. If you find it difficult finding these opportunities, the staff at Harrow Youth Stop are always willing to help you. Yes, walking up the stairs to the Youth Stop will be a little scary the first time, but you need to remember that it is okay to ask for help. After all, these small steps will make a massive difference in the future; when you are doing or working up to doing what you have wanted to.