DR. WALLACE: I have goals for my future that I have pretty much kept to myself for many years. I have a circle of pretty close friends at school, plus a few other friends who are definitely less close to me and more on the periphery of my life.

A few weeks ago, I kind of mentally decided that I would like to share my main goals with at least one other person to get some rough feedback. At first, I started going through my closest friends, trying to figure out which one I would make this disclosure to, but after a while, I talked to myself out of it because of all the preparation, feedback and inevitable debate that would immediately arise from such a conversation.

Instead, I decided to share it with a girl who I don't know all that well but have been friendly with for about a year. She doesn't interact with my other friends at all, so I figured she would be a safe alternative. One day I asked her if I could invite her out to lunch on a Saturday. She looked at me quizzically but then said, "Yes, that's fine. I can do it."

We set up a lunch, and I of course paid for it because I invited her out, and I just simply told her that I wanted to run a few of my goals by her to get her feedback. I also told her she could feel free to share anything she would like with me in return.

To my utter amazement, she listened to about a 5-to-10-minute oration that I gave her all about my future goals, and when I concluded, she asked a very simple question that should've been obvious to me but for whatever reason I had never considered or thought consciously about! It truly threw me for a loop, and all I could say in reply was, "That's a good question."

She was very bland and blase about everything that I told her, although she did say it sounded fine if that was something I wanted to try. She wasn't critical at all about anything, but her matter-of-fact replies really both surprised me and threw me off my game a bit.

Now I'm glad that I spoke to her because I realize I hadn't thought everything through as much as I probably should have. Do you feel it's dangerous for someone like me to have big future goals when it's obvious that I haven't thought them through nearly far enough at this point? — My Goals Are Further Away Than I Thought, via email

MY GOALS ARE FURTHER AWAY THAN I THOUGHT: Actually, what you did was an excellent exercise and a very good first step! Don't be so quick to give up future goals simply because they need more thought, honing and development to become more gradually realistic as time moves forward.

Use what you've learned from this conversation to your advantage. Do more research, think carefully about your situation, and perhaps talk to other people — not necessarily your closest friends but perhaps adults who may provide guidance in the area in which your dreams and goals reside.

Any long-term goal requires a meandering journey to achieve, and you've discovered that verbalizing your ideas has helped you to realize they need further activity and research to keep pushing forward. This is a good thing, so carry on at this point with further research until you can make a better and more informed decision in the future.

NOT MUCH STUDYING GETS DONE AT HER HOUSE

DR. WALLACE: I'm a female high school student, and I have a friend who always likes to invite me over to her house after school to study. She's one of my better friends, and I do enjoy spending social time with her, but the truth is, she's not a great student and doesn't take her academics anywhere near as seriously as I do.

Whenever I go over her house to "study," we end up spending a short amount of time looking through our textbooks and the preponderance of our time playing with the pets at her house (her family has two dogs and a cat), plus she always wants to have afterschool snacks, as there are usually treats in the family refrigerator.

There's no doubt I enjoy hanging out with her, playing with the pets and eating the treats, but I feel like I hardly ever get any serious studying done at all for more than 15 or 20 minutes. And what's odd is, even though I'm the better student, she doesn't necessarily push me to give her any ideas, pointers or suggestions on how I could help her to study better. How can I get her to be more serious and study with me when we agree to do afterschool studies together? — Not Much Studying Gets Done, via email

NOT MUCH STUDYING GETS DONE: You absolutely can't expect her to make changes or suddenly get serious at this point. This is especially true when the venue is going to be her family home, with all the pets and different things going on that distract her.

My advice to you is to do your serious studying alone at home, and when you have time to carve out for social purposes, consider it purely a social visit with her when you're going to hang out once in a while at her house after school. This will free you up mentally to enjoy yourself and not worry about studying hard at all during the time you were there. If she does crack the textbooks seriously one day, by all means join her, and if she has any good questions, help her as much as you can. But don't try to push her or scold her into studying harder during these "social" get-togethers.

Dr. Robert Wallace welcomes questions from readers. Although he is unable to reply to all of them individually, he will answer as many as possible in this column. Email him at [email protected]. To find out more about Dr. Robert Wallace and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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