"Don't follow in your aunts' footsteps, social workers don't make much" my mother said to me one night. I knew she was right, at least when it came to my aunts. They struggled to pay the bills post-college, so what did that mean for me? Well, I wanted to do something different. For me, social work isn't about the money. I just wanted to see what I could do in the world that I had seen people experience. Since my birth I was an observer, not a participant. When I got to high school, what I had seen was a world of terror. Being a teenager isn't the easiest thing and what made it harder was the use of social media and the popularity of drugs as fads that came and went. Although I never fell into self-harming though substances myself, I noticed how other kids, just like me, were slipping down that path. Many of them didn't just do it because they were "bad kids", they did it because of their internal issues, environments, lack of help available, and trauma. My hope in this world is to prioritize the mental health of teenagers and make sure they have access to resources that aren't self-harming and self-destructive. My career choice for my future is to become a licensed clinical social worker and therapist. I would like to help teenagers and young adults through creating care plans, healthy coping mechanisms, and tacking their progress along their journey. I am just about to graduate with an Associates in Social Work and next fall I will officially be starting my Bachelors of Social Work program. Although I have a long way to go until I finally receive a Masters and a license, I am sure that it'll all be worth the difference I can make in the future. Last fall I was in a car accident that totaled my car, but thankfully I wasn't physically harmed. I had been driving home from my aunt's house after she helped me apply to college and on the way home I was hit by a drunk driver. Unfortunately at the same time that this accident happened, I was just starting out with interning in the social work field. My grades were slowly slipping and it was too hard to keep up with school, interning, and working. My mother had to drive me everywhere, often sacrificing her own sleep after overnight shifts. The sacrifice here was my sanity. The overload of trying to balance school, life, and this event that had just happened triggered my anxiety that had mostly gone away after months of utilizing my doctor's advice. It came back overnight and most of the time it added extra stressors to my already crazy schedule. Even though this accident completely threw me off balance, I was still able to finish the semester and with excellent grades. Teenagers are in their prime of development during that time of their lives. At times it feels like society has cast teenagers aside, describing their problems as "kid stuff". But that is far from the truth. When teenagers engage in adult activities, especially dangerous ones, that is where the trouble starts. They're risking their development and the cost of this can be lifelong trauma and effects, possibly adding to any preexisting trauma. I say that enough is enough, teens' and young adults' mental health needs to be prioritized and more accessible to the masses. As a future licensed clinical social worker, I would like to make this change happen.