Running Lines | Following dreams

— I am embarking on a very expensive but awesome adventure.

This week, instead of being at my desk by the window or around town taking pictures and asking nosy questions, I am surrounded by my people - writers. I am at a 10-day writing seminar in pursuit of a graduate degree.

Here’s my advice to young people who just graduated high school (parents, please skip ahead and ignore): Don’t do what everyone wants you to do unless it’s what you want also. That might seem like a simple statement, but you will be surprised at how much you want to please your parents.

I have a very stern father who is not afraid to tell me what he thinks about my rebellious nature. That trait I inherited from him is both a blessing and a curse. Whenever I would decide somecrazy profession I wanted to enter into (you can’t really call ski bum a profession, but there’ve been others, too), he would first look at me like I was 5 and tried to run out in the street, then ask me my reasonings (which in my head always seemed rational but really who can be sure?) for moving away to somewhere I don’t know anyone to make next-to-nothing and basically be him 30 years ago.

So, debated with myself about starting a “career” or keeping up this “I can do whatever I want” attitude, it finally dawned on me that maybe the “whatever I want” could be my career.

I was scared to tell my dad that I wanted to be a writer, study writing. I think he expected me to grow out of my life-of-creativity phase after college.

I don’t know if it was because maybe he sees life differently after battling cancer,or it takes a certain amount of falling-and-picking-yourself-up for your parents to see you as an adult. Maybe there’s some sort of colored aura around you when you realize you just need to do what you need to do and that’s that. But when I told him I was starting a master’s program at a small private school in Vermont, he looked at me like I had just finished my residency as a cardiac surgeon.

For once in my life, my only reason for doing this makes sense: Because I want to and I can.

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Cassi Lapp is the news clerk/staff writer of The Times of Northeast Benton County. A Colorado native, Lapp graduated from the University of Arkansas. She can be reached at clapp@ nwaonline.com.

Opinion, Pages 4 on 06/16/2010