Random Thoughts from an Overanalyzing Teenager, an Article by American Teen, Julia Schemmer

I came across this article on Huffington Post by a 17 year old in America, Julia Schemmer (@juliaschemmer). Only a junior at Norco High School, she enjoys challenging herself with four Advanced Placement and Honours courses, as well as nineteen clubs and volunteering at Crossroads Christian Church four days a week. She is also a member of National Teen Council, a High School Ambassador for HerCampus.com, a writer for HerCulture.org, and the founder of the Face of Cancer. One day, Julia would like to become an international human rights lawyer, specifically in India and the Middle East region.

She titled the article Random Thoughts from an Overanalyzing Teenager and I think the message in the article is worth sharing. Read and be a motivated teenager.

Allow me to not feel inspired, but empowered; for inspiration comes and goes in fleeting seasons, but a moment of sheer empowerment grants enough strength for a lifelong commitment of following dreams relentlessly. Inspiration is deceptively sweet, for when it is allowed it to leak into your heart; it gains an undeserving confidence, and brings havoc when it flies away into the heart of another ambitious soul. Empowerment is no crystal staircase. Empowerment exposes light into the dark confines of your inmost being. It shreds away the doubt, the excuses and the anxiety associated with the death of a dream. Empowerment is a difficult pill to swallow, yet the desperate cure needed for the apathetic generation to be encouraged to change the world.

Allow me not to be a winner, but a champion, for a winner is only a flirter of the fates, but a champion inputs endless efforts to succeed. A winner receives its tidings through chance and probability, but a champion earns its winnings through hard work and perseverance. A winner expects such success, but a champion has to defeat all odds before its outcome can be foreseen. I do not want to taste success on a golden platter handed to me by a servant. I do not want to (be) given a reputation that I did not earn. Allow me to go through the abyss, the fire, the storm, the devastation to rise up as a leader, a conqueror, a victor. For when I go through the worst, I am transformed into the best.

I am not a Nobel Peace Prize winner. I am not the top student in my junior class. I am not the winning goal, nor the scoring basket. I am however, motivated by my ambitions to change the world. I am no one special; but I have loved deeply and trusted infinitely. I may not have the most tear-evoking story out there, but I do have a story that has motivated me to not become another statistic, to see success from my efforts. I may not be the prettiest face or the skinniest body, but I am learning to love myself, and for me, that's a great start. I am learning things I like about myself, and things I do not, but I am accepting both and learning to pursue my dreams, as an empowered champion.