Several recent radio ads and internet articles say that teens won’t ever go to college if they don’t start right after high school.
 As high school students, people often ask, “What are your plans after high school?”
 And often we don’t have an answer.
According to idahoednews.org, 52 percent of Idaho high school graduates do attend college the fall following graduation.
But that means 48 percent of Idaho teens don’t go to college. Some join the military and some are working, trying to save money. Some genuinely don’t know what they want to do with their lives and aren’t ready to commit to the cost of college
Society as a whole needs to be OK with that, to stop the stigma that teens will be failures if they don’t want to attend a university.
A study conducted by Huffington Post found that 78 percent of people in the U.S. go to college by the age of 20. And 88 percent attend by age 26.
 One’s future depends on a person’s attitude. If a person wants to succeed, he or she will. Teens don’t need to listen to the negative voices in life saying they won’t make it, because that won’t get a person anywhere.
 Say it now:  “I am not a statistic. I will not fail.”
 Each high school graduate is their own person and no one can predict how life will work out.
 The people telling teens to go to college right away are most likely twice their age. These people, although they say they understand what teens are going through, really don’t understand the struggles of being a college student in the 21st century.
 In the 1980s when many Millennials’ parents were going to school, tuition costs were much cheaper than they are now. According to forbes.com, college tuition in 1986 was around $10,000 per semester. Now it costs $26,000-plus to attend the same colleges. So although they understand the struggles of finances and such, many adults don’t understand this generation’s personal struggle.
 It’s much harder to receive financial aid in this day and age, and also much harder to pay off student loans. The struggle is very, VERY real.
 If a high school graduate really isn’t ready for college, that’s OK.
 College can happen later.
 For now, it is a reasonable option for a new graduate to work and save money, to travel the world, to live without having to worry about homework.
To not worry what friends are doing. Yeah, friends might end up moving away while others don’t, and maybe not even going to college at all. that’s how life works and that’s how people evolve and grow.
Students need to do whatever it may be that is best for themselves. The collective student body is not here to be a miserable slave to society.