College. An educational institution or establishment, one providing higher education or specialized professional or vocational training.

For everyone, their own definition of college can be different. It can be going to a university, taking a gap year, going abroad. Regardless, going to college is a choice. Not going to college is a choice.

Finding and following your own path after high school is a choice. It can be a choice you make to benefit yourself or one you make to benefit someone else.

But how exactly does one know how to mentally make this choice?

Finding and following your own conscience is a choice. Conscience is your college decision. Conscience is the path you decide to take after your high school years.

“Conscience is the sense of consciousness of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one’s conduct, intentions, or character together with a feeling of obligation to do right or be good,” (Merriam Webster). Our conscience is our “do or don’t” best friend throughout our entire life.

So often, we can be engulfed in a cloud of those post-high school plans when we surround ourselves with peers in the same boat we are, literally and figuratively. In “From the Republic of Conscience” by Seamus Heaney, he writes that conscience is “a stylized boat…the sail is an ear, the mast a sloping pen, the hull a mouth-shape, the keel an open eye.” Everyone has the same blueprint of a conscience. However, in the end, it is our own choice.

In Enemy of the People by Arthur Miller, Tom Stockmann realizes that the water in the springs, a very popular attraction of their town, is poisoned. He then has a difficult choice to make. He can keep his knowledge of the poison to himself in order to benefit the city and allow them to continue making money off of the attraction. He can also tell the town what he knows about the springs to save the health of the townspeople, but bring down the town income while doing so. In the end, Tom’s conscience leads him on the path of coming clean to his town about the springs.

Freshman year is the starting line. At the beginning of the high school experience, students come in already thinking about the finish line. The competitiveness and pressure of excelling well enough to get into a good college is a big weight on a person’s shoulders, just as conscience is a big weight on a person’s shoulders. However, it can often be difficult to realize that our conscience will bring us to the right place, even though it may not be the easiest place or the place we think we want to be. Tom Stockmann goes through this exact thing, which is that following our path may not always be the easiest thing to do, but it can be rewarding in the end.

Bobbie Harro in the Cycle of Socialization says, “We are inundated with unquestioned and stereotypical messages that shape how we think and what we believe about ourselves and others. What makes this ‘brainwashing’ even more insidious is the fact that it is woven into every structural thread of the fabric of our culture,” (49).

The second that high school begins, your path towards the future begins. Whether you like it or not, deciding what to plug next into Google Maps is an inevitable part of growing up. Of course, it is your choice on how you decide to follow that path. You may take some shortcuts, take a detour, or simply just enjoy the view and see where it takes you.

It can be mentally draining to follow your conscience. Some people like to think of it as an angel and devil on each shoulder, screaming in your ear to make the “correct” choice.

For me, following my path has never been easy. With my stereotypical Jewish parents, since I live under their roof, I live by their rules. I have a curfew, I have laundry rules, I don’t always have the freedom to raid the fridge even when I desperately need to do so. Being a 17 year old can be tricky and confusing. You aren’t a kid, but you can’t technically be considered an adult.

Even though I do in fact live under my parents’ roof and by their rules, they gave me the complete freedom to follow my own college path. Yes, there have been plenty of times so far in my senior year where I wanted to graduate and get a much-needed break from education. However, I listened to my conscience. I knew that I wanted to get a career in doing something I loved, and I simply couldn’t do so without further continuing my education.

I followed my path.