DR. WALLACE: I played on the girls basketball team this year at my high school, and I did fairly well. I was not a starter, but I was in the "first seven rotation" which meant that I was almost always the first or second substitute who received playing time off the bench.

I competed reliably well, to the best of my ability, even if I was not a star player. I heard that next year there will be several openings for cheerleaders. I think I'd be really good at that, and I'd almost certainly enjoy it more. And when the girls basketball team plays next school year, I could be right there to cheer them on!

I had this all set in my mind until one of our other top substitute players called my idea of switching to cheerleading "lame." She said that going from being an athlete to a girl standing around with pompoms is laughable. Is being a cheerleader really lame compared to being an athlete on the court? — Considering a Change, via email

CONSIDERING A CHANGE: Being a cheerleader is absolutely not lame! Cheerleaders use their athleticism as well, just in different ways. And if you feel that you'd enjoy it more, I wholeheartedly suggest that you try out for the cheerleading squad at your high school. Cheerleaders are a team too, and you'll enjoy camaraderie with your fellow cheerleaders if you make the team.

Then you can tell your former basketball teammate that you will lead cheers for her even if she's not impressed with your new team venture.

I'M MORE CONFUSED NOW THAN I WAS BEFORE I ASKED FOR ADVICE!

DR. WALLACE: I don't know who to trust! I have a personal problem, and so I asked my father for advice (even though I knew what he would say) and then spoke to some of my closest friends and even two of my favorite teachers and a school counselor.

I'm a senior in high school, and I need to make an important decision, but after asking all these people for advice, I'm more confused than ever. I thought that I'd be likely to receive a few outlier suggestions and that the rest of these people would give me a decisive majority opinion. That would have put me at ease and helped me make this decision.

Now what should I do? There were a few vague similarities in the suggestions I received, but there were literally seven different suggestions given to me by seven different people. Now I feel frozen and can't seem to make any decision about this matter at all. Do you have any suggestions? — More Confused Than Ever, via email

MORE CONFUSED THAN EVER: Perhaps you can break this matter, whatever it is, down into expected time frames. By this I mean that you should take a good, hard and thorough look at the short-term ramifications of your decision.

The immediate day-to-day impact of a decision usually outweighs almost everything for most people. But I'm going to encourage you to look at future time frames of six months, two years, five years and 20 years. These milestones should each bring their own plusses and minuses to your decision. Try to really think hard about where each possible decision would be most likely to leave you at these future points in your life. For example, the six-month marker may not feel too different from any immediate impact, but if you take the time to truly think things through, you can and will be able to envision yourself in various scenarios as we approach Thanksgiving this fall.

And you should absolutely take time to impact your study of where you'd likely be in five and 20 years from now based upon which option you select. Force yourself to look down the road the very best you can.

Finally, as you go through this exercise, go back and see how your gut feelings match up or don't match up with the advice you've recently received. Try to think through which suggestions were mainly based on the present day and which ones might have factored in a two-, five- or 20-year window as part of the reason for the underlying suggestion.

Going through these exercises I'm suggesting may help you to find new ways to look at your decision and the advice you've garnered to date, and at the very least will give you a bit more depth to lean on as you ultimately make your decision.

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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