Megan Byrom is a student at Priestley College.

Here, she shares her hopes for 2020

IT is 2019, I am 18 years old and I can be almost certain that the next decade, the 2020s, will be an important one.

It is a significant decade for me, and many other people my age.

I think of my 20s with words emblazoned onto the back of my mind: University, career, marriage, kids, house etc, a Star Wars-esque scroll rolling upwards into my mind and getting stuck there, as I try to unpick just how serious it all sounds.

But 2020, and the next year ahead is my priority.

My university application is done, but in 2020 I’ll discover where I end up.

We’re all turning 18.

Some of us will be moving away, and stepping into that unknown void that I know as the world outside of Warrington.

But the next decade does not just mark me finally having to act like an adult.

It is an important one for the world, for our town and for Britain as a whole.

I look at the legacy of the 2010s and I am reminded of deep divisions that have been scoured across this nation.

It seems that I am not the only one who has some growing up to do, and I hope that politics can come of age and act with a maturity, tolerance, and wisdom that people always say comes with time.

There seems to be a clash of possibilities as I go into the next decade.

On one hand, is that steady serious future hanging in the wings, and another are those rising issues braced and waiting to see who can get to me first.

But it seems that the next ten years will be vital in preserving that balance that has always kept chaos at bay and will now have to stop sea levels rising, our economy collapsing and keep my future secure.

There is a convergence of tensions that make the future appear more vulnerable than ever.

And whilst it is important, I don’t know what I am expecting.

Perhaps we’ll have total anarchy or maybe we’ll be underwater, but I open my arms to the new decade, and introduce myself to this stranger, that perhaps naively, I’m excited to meet.