When I was a kid, my sole ambition in life was to be the first person on Mars. I daydreamed about manning my own spaceship, completing a decade-long journey to the famous red planet, and proudly planting the U.S. flag on Martian soil. I was certain that space exploration lay in my blood—at least, until I shared my designs with my first-grade desk partner, who promptly informed me that I was an idiot. My dreams are somewhat more practical now, and I tend to relate them to more objective listeners. But the message still hasn’t changed.

The great thing about America, I’m told, is its offer of unparalleled freedom, the promise that the only limit to what you can accomplish is your willingness to make it happen. Feel like opening your own records shop? Save up a bit of cash, make a few investments, and you’re all set. Dream about joining the bomb squad? Go ahead; no one’s stopping you. Want to sell homemade sodas by the side of the highway? Why not? Go for it. The window of opportunity never closes.

But while our futures are unhindered by legal restrictions, they remain fraught with social consequence. We are under extraordinary pressure to make one of the Three Choices: doctor, lawyer, or businessperson. A career in any one of these areas is supposedly a golden ticket to prestige, money, and power—all the "important things" in life. As far as these options are concerned, though, I have no future whatsoever. The sight of blood makes me queasy; I freeze up while giving speeches; I can only sell my candy apples through a combination of self-purchasing and blackmail. I think I can safely assume that I’m doomed.

I’ve always wondered who sets the guidelines for success. Maybe there’s a group out there responsible for creating a worthiness grading scale, a set of criteria based on annual income, profession, and Porsche ownership. In spite of my shortcomings, I think of myself as a reasonably intelligent person—certainly not someone destined for failure. But according to the current social standard, I might as well start packing my bags right now.

Selecting a career may seem like an intensely individual decision, one that has minimal, if any, impact on others, but in reality it generates quite a ripple effect. Suppose that tomorrow, en route to my house, I am unexpectedly hit by a car. As I lie in the hospital, flitting in and out of consciousness, my indifferent doctor tosses me some morphine and leaves. Later, when I file a lawsuit against the driver, I’m stuck with an attorney more concerned about his next paycheck (which he’ll receive regardless of the suit’s outcome) than upholding my rights on judicial grounds. When I return to work at Corporation A, I find out that my boss let the business slide, can no longer afford to keep all his employees, and has fired me as a result.

A title, sans passion, is an empty word. A diploma, without dedication, is a sheet of paper tacked to the wall. Simply having the name or the degree is not enough. Our future should not be determined by the unhappy medical students wishing they had pursued their real ambitions, but by those whose love for the subject shines through in a genuine and inspirational way. Look around, and you can easily pick out the next generation of pioneers. The FBLA officer who has been following the stock market since she was twelve. The student who, after mastering AP Biology, hopes to someday master the art of saving lives. The brilliant debater who believes with all his heart that the U.S. Constitution is the best document ever written.

Maybe it’s time for us to redefine success. We’ve measured achievement in terms of social acceptability for so long that we’ve neglected the factors that really matter: sacrifice, determination, and a profound love for what you do. I admit that I’ve fallen into that trap as well. Sometimes I feel like cracking open a law book just so I won’t feel so left out. But regardless of my apparent conformity, you can be certain that when NASA starts recruiting for its first Mars mission, I’ll be first in line.

Texting is taking over the world; I am completely and utterly convinced of this. It’s everywhere, stealthily infiltrating society like some sort of technological plague. Walk into virtually any room, and it’ll be filled with people glued to their cellphone screens, any attempts to strike up a friendly conversation thwarted by noncommittal shrugs and irritated jerks of the head. Sometimes it gets so quiet that if it weren’t for the faint sound of the keypads, you’d think everyone there was dead. It’s a pretty unnerving feeling. The eerie, telltale patches of light lurking beneath desks and the robotic "click click click" of hastily tapped keys will haunt me until my dying day.

Now, texting does have its advantages, I’ll grant you that. If, for whatever reason, I am unable to speak and need to contact someone immediately, I can just send off a quick message to a friend and retrieve the desired information in no time at all. Click, click, done. It’s fast, it’s efficient, and it’s convenient.

I have no qualms with the concept of texting. It isn’t an inherently evil practice, just a phenomenon that we’ve blown hopelessly out of proportion. When you’re incapable of setting your phone down for five minutes, you have a problem. When you act as though you’ll start bleeding profusely if severed from that connection, you have a problem. When you’d rather spend hours typing out a twenty-minute conversation with your thumbs than have a real-life discussion with your friends, you have a problem. It’s a sad sign of our times that we actually needed to pass a law prohibiting texting while driving, that this has become a common enough practice to merit governmental intervention. Really, how much common sense does it take to avoid texting and operating a high-speed vehicle at the same time? Not only is it dangerous, but it’s grossly irresponsible. You’re putting the lives of your passengers and innocent bystanders at risk for a conversation that probably wasn’t all that important anyway.

But perhaps the most worrisome aspect of the texting phenomenon is how indifferent we’ve become to basic courtesy. We’re so self-absorbed in our little texting bubbles that the outside world effectively deteriorates into background noise and other useless distractions. Maybe we don’t realize the effect that our texting obsession has on others. Maybe we just don’t give a damn. At any rate, conscious or not, it’s downright rude. There is a time and a place for everything, and when people need your attention engaged, they expect you to listen. And no, that doesn’t entail absent-mindedly nodding "mhmm, mhmm," as you gaze intently at the one-inch screen in your hand.

As a society, we’re becoming increasingly desensitized to this sort of blatant rudeness. Our attitude today can be summed up with a nonchalant "Well, everyone does it, so it’s not a big deal," as though this somehow justifies our behavior. Every time you blow someone off, you’re effectively saying that they are unimportant, that what they have to say couldn’t matter less. Regardless of whatever you’re typing into your cell phone, the real message you’re sending is "I don’t care."