Assignment 18 - Victor Allison

It takes no small degree of perseverance, tenacity, intelligence, and luck to achieve one's life goals before greeting the dark shade. Achieving one's goals can be easy enough, however, when the bar is set low enough. One can either live by setting expectations as low as possible, rendering failure impossible, or by setting the highest goal possible, producing only disappointment. Finding a middle ground is key. Therefore, by the end of high school I want to have learned the guitar. By the end of college I want to have a clear career path planned out. And before I kick the bucket, I want a seaworld-level fish tank with a great white shark in it.

Music has always played a significant role in my life. At the age of 8, Philip and I were given piano lessons, and I continue to play piano regularly. I taught myself to play a ukulele near the beginning of sophomore year, and can play several songs on the harmonica as well. Only recently have I began trying to learn the guitar, and I hope to become competent by the time graduation creeps up. 

For the duration of high school, I have been asked what I want to be when I grow up. By the time I graduate college I will have majored, or maybe even double majored, in an area that appeals to me. My only hope is that I have a clear idea by then about how to make my living. How will I buy my first house? With what kind of income will I begin to pay my taxes? How expensive will a glass tank large enough to house a car-sized aquatic carnivore? These are all questions I hope to have answered by then.

After retirement, at an unknown age, in an unknown city, my only hope is to stay active and alert in my final years. As death creeps warily to my doorstep with every passing day, I pray that I may greet him from in front of a glowing blue tank occupied by twenty hungry feet of gray muscle and layered teeth. I can only dream of the day I sit reading by the fire, grandchildren playing at my feet, basking in the cold glow of a thousand gallon container housing my prized oceanic hunter. Only then will I think to myself, "wow. I made it." Only then will I have reached the highest rung, the summit, the top tier. As the soulless, doll-like eyes of my beautiful pet stalk back and forth in the tank I have provided with the sweat of my own brow, I will sit back and reminisce on my life, knowing that none of it, none at all, was spent in vain.