After-College Rumination

Congratulations you soon-to-be-graduate, you! You survived years of exams, all-nighters and vicious college heartbreaks.  Now look at you, out on the other side trying to figure things out. You have your whole life ahead of you and the best days are yet to come. Well, your best days probably aint the next 365 ones, but they'll come. 

The transition from college into the "real world" is so frightening. You feel pressure to figure out who you are and what you want to do for the rest of your life, while living to the expectations of the people who love you. I mean, finishing college was one of my biggest goals. But right now, I have no clue what lm doing. Shocking. Bet you've never heard a college student worry about that before. But really, I freak out about my future every single day the same way our parents freaked out whenever they dropped us off at preschool. Except this time, now lm just scared of freaking my parents out because time has dropped me off at a place called my future and l have no idea what lm doing there. 

I just wish someone could point their fingers and say to me, "hey, this is what you are doing and this is how you are going to get there and this is how the rest of your life is going to play out". If you ask me, at this moment im too old for everything I've known but too young to be a real person yet. If only our lives were being navigated like a GPS system, it would probably be amazing. I guess. 

But as scared as l am, l refuse to believe college is the best four years of our lives. I mean, that's depressing. I would like to think that my life is more than red solo cups, parties and guys that are more loyal to their college meal plans than they have ever been to me. I mean, I do have big dreams. But l cant let being scared of what l want stop me from trying. I've got this college thing figured out, now its time to explore this whole adult thing.  I can't give you concrete reasons not to be scared of the future, but I can assure you this, being scared of life after college is just the fear of growing up that we eventually have to face.

The cliché that once out of college 'you figure things out' and become an 'adult' is a fantasy. You never figure things out and no one ever becomes an experienced  adult. Im sure even fifty year olds wonder how on earth they got there. I've  accepted that at one point lm going to make mistakes and disappoint people who love me. That l will have to make choices that are true to myself even though they are likely to run counter to what others think l should do. I know lm going to get through this and it’s going to be awesome and a  year from now I'll be wondering what exactly l was afraid of. 

Here's to living in the present, appreciating what we have right now and to feeling grateful for how far we’ve come.