Paradox:The teenager

A ton of teenagers are mindlessly floating through life right now, i'd argue that the majority of them actually are - and that maybe 5%-10% are mindfully performing actions in their day to day lives, with a small cohort (1%?) that live up to their full potential, or atleast try to. I'm talking about the kid that studies 10 hour days on the holidays and every waking hour during school days. That's one path that would lead to a moderate amount of success, that's for sure. Regardless of what your thoughts on academia are, the 1% of academic warriors that are able to develop skills such as discipline and fundemental hard work end up flourishing in whatever field they choose to endeavour. For a lot of them, they choose Finance. 

This all begs the question: What is the most efficient use of a teenagers' time?

I, a teenager myself, sometimes sit back and try to think about where my life could end up. Most of the time, the outcome of this mini thought session is blank. I don't know where I could end up, everything seems unstable to me, with constant stimuli trying to appeal to me from all directions (develop my financial future right now, or chase academia? how about work an internship during the summer? what outcome has teh best results?) it usually becomes quite tiring for me to reliably chase my dreams. If I venture out from academia and chase finance right now, and risk potentially becoming a millionaire before I'm 25 with slim odds at success, I've got my parents on my back constantly pressuring me to focus on academia in order to get into a college that I know they won't be able to afford. I don't want the student loan, it's too much for too little. What's the point of spending all that time in college just to basically duplicate my years in school but this time with "a career" being the next ladder to climb? It all goes from "You need to be one of the best national scorers academically to get into your dream college" to now being in that college, and then being forced to study 3-5 more years for "a job" that i'm supposedly going to love.

I've never really said this before, but I had recently gotten a 19/45 on my academic mock exams in the IB diploma. It is a 2 year course for highschoolers, an alternate to the standard GPA/American scoring system that promises higher returns on investment, and is specifically designed to entice to the ivy league colleges.