Foresight in the dictionary is defined as, "Perception of the significance and nature of events before they have occurred." Foresight is a crucial tool for the success you gain in life whether or not you choose to use it is up to you.

Going through high school this is one thing that I struggled with. As a teen I felt like I had my head on my shoulders and like many other teens felt indestructible. High school was a point in my life where I was no longer sheltered by the innocence of youth and I began to be exposed to all of the flaws in society and had to make my own decisions of what is right or wrong. High school seemed to be the point in time where you start picking out people’s flaws and start straying from your parents. You realize that they are human beings too and are not these perfect individuals that you thought they were when you were a child. You still respect your parents but if you were walking down a street and bumped into them you as strangers, you would probably think twice about being their friend. But, before I start mumbling about teenage drama, I want to bring up the importance of foresight.

As a senior here at George Mason I have gone through four years of high school and feel as if I have been in many "friend circles," or whatever you want to call them and have yet to find one that suits me. In high school you go through many changes trying to figure out who you are and what group best fits your own personal attributes but in some cases you adapt to fit a certain group so that you are not bored and without friends. Some people avoided this problem by finding pleasure in activities they did alone or better yet found ways to motivate themselves through homework. Even though you are in the youngest grade when you first enter high school you still feel old and ready to experience the world. I guess for some people as soon as they entered high school they were smart enough to start working hard, keeping college in mind for their future. Others were more focused on having fun, myself as an example.

Freshman and sophomore years were a time to experience the freedoms that you did not have in middle school. Everything people told you and taught you were things that were bad for your health and could hurt you in the long run. Ironically, they became just new ideas of things to try as soon as you got home. Smoking became a regular after-school routine and when people got bored with that they began trying new things such as "pot" or drinking alcohol to go along with that smooth taste of a cigarette.

Some people quit early and realized that smoking was stupid or they were just too poor to afford a pack a week while for others it was too late and it would take a lot of discipline to stop smoking. Then you had the kids who looked for a party every weekend, dialing rampantly on their cell phone pads, calling everyone they knew to see where the best party was going to be to make sure they were there. After a few drinks the "party" begins, because kids find themselves boring. I guess life intoxicated or stoned allows everyone to think that everyone else finds them hilarious because you could say something that when you’re sober is stupid is not funny, but because everyone else is intoxicated or stoned, it is funny. What people might not understand or might ignore are the consequences that can happen from these illegal trends and that while you might have a couple of hours of fun, if you were to be caught you could essentially affect your entire life.

Another reason kids seem to enjoy drinking or smoking, besides the attraction of it being risky and illegal, is that kids are always complaining there is nothing to do in Falls Church so the best thing to do is buy a 24 pack, call up your buddies, maybe even smoke a bowl to waste away the day. I find this trend ironic because here you have kids complaining there is nothing to do or they don’t have enough money to do the fun things, so they spend $20 a weekend escaping reality and finding a fun place in the mind to go to in this dull town. I guess living life isn’t as fun as escaping it.

When I was younger I heard all about the effects of making bad decisions like drinking or smoking, but as much as the teachers and counselors warned, I ignored. My attitude was "You can’t judge something until you try it," so I justified my bad decisions by telling myself I would just try it once and decide what my own opinion was. I can’t tell you how stressful it was living my life constantly asking the question "will I be caught?" I’m sure other people can relate to being questioned by their parents for doing something and the parents don’t tell you what you did. They just use that parent line, "you know what you did." So you scroll your memory files of all the things you label as being wrong, yet for some reason at the time you did them you did not think about whether or not it was right or wrong.

This is where the power of foresight comes in handy. Foresight allows you to predict the future outcomes based upon the decisions you are about to make. By my ignorant philosophy of life, "you can’t judge something until you try it," I am amazed that my circumstances are not worse. In theory, if someone told me that jumping in front of a truck would hurt me, I’d still try it to make sure I agreed with them. I use that analogy because drinking or smoking can be just as harmful as jumping in front of a truck because what people forget is that it can kill you whether or not it’s the first time you try it or 30 years down the road. It’s the gamble you take.

Some kids are interested in the illegal lifestyle because they have friends that have been doing it for months or even years and have not been caught, so while they first may have been inclined to be skeptical of the consequences, they are deluded into trying it and learning it is not as bad as everyone says it is; that is, until they are caught. For me, after going to the hospital and getting my stomach pumped sophomore year and going to see a drug counselor, I realized that the "juice was not worth the squeeze," meaning that the few hours of intoxication or high, was not worth getting in this much trouble.

I learned that it was much easier to live life without the attitude of "will I be caught?" and by staying clean I would never have to worry about something I did. I also learned that living life is only as good as you make it. Instead of spending money on a 24 pack every weekend or an eighth I could use my money to buy something I enjoyed and start finding new hobbies to occupy my time. They may not be as social as hanging out with a group of friends and drinking so that you can be comfortable around them, but these new hobbies satisfy me and keep me busy.

It seems though that as much as you tell people the consequences of drinking or smoking there will always be kids that feel daring enough to try these things. So what’s the point of warning people, if no one is willing to listen? I guess there is no point, but maybe down the road I can say, "I told you so."

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