Reckless driving, drinking alcohol, doing drugs, driving under the influence and partying every weekend fall under two categories: immaturity and carelessness. Every student at Freedom is under the age of 21, the legal drinking age. Most freshmen students are 14 or 15 years old, and if age 18 is too young to start drinking at parties, then every age in between is way too young. People are more worried about what other people think of them now than they are about their futures. I don’t know if people realize it, but what we do now will affect our futures.
Think about it: one night you’re at a party with a few friends. On the way to the destination, you’re so excited to get drunk that you almost run a stop sign, which could have resulted in a wreck. You arrive at the party safely and pick up a cup that has already been filled; there’s no way to know if someone spiked it.
“Oh well,” you think. The next thing you know, you wake up in a hospital bed lucky enough to be alive. No one, besides your best friend in the car, knows what happened. She died on the drunken ride home.
How does that party affect your future? You killed your best friend and scared everyone who loves you. The idea of what makes people like each other these days is terrible. In some people’s minds, drinking and doing drugs is “cool.” It isn’t, though. For the rest of your life, you could be grieving about your best friend rather than sharing your wedding with her. The future comes from what you do now, and if you don’t remember your last sober weekend, help is needed.
Driving drunk is a terrible idea, but sober reckless driving is just as bad. After I get out of my spot in the student parking lot, half of the time I have to slam on my brakes because a car backs out in front of me. First of all, it doesn’t take 15 mph speeds to go in reverse. Some students allow passengers in the car to influence them to do unsafe things. I make my passengers buckle their seat belts upon entering my car. It’s safe and harmless; everyone should give it a try.
What about being reckless in general? Some teenagers will do anything their friends tell them. Friends still triple dog dare each other to do stupid things, like licking bird droppings or jumping off a building. There is no reason that you need to lick bird poop; who are you trying to impress? If those friends really love you, they will accept you if you decide to take a chicken on this round. Being randomly reckless in times like these can affect your future employer’s decisions because it would surely end up on social networking.
More can affect our futures than we all think. Therefore, you have to think before you take action. It is just like thinking before you speak because hurting others is a possibility. In the long run, it is you that will be hurt. Consider how to improve your maturity; the worst that could happen is your “friends” don’t like you anymore. But then again, the best thing would be to have a life worth living.