With summer, as any college student knows, along with peeling sunburns and sand in various unnamed crevices, comes any adult within a 100-mile radius armed with the same endless questions. They go something like, “How are your grades?” or “What do you really wanna do with that degree?” and worst of all, “What are your plans?” While we’re away at school, we can avoid these terrifying questions that make us want to bury our head in an empty pizza box and pray for a nuclear winter, because we’re avoiding the only question that we should probably have an answer to but we just don’t: What the hell do I do now?
I started writing this in the beginning of the summer. Fast-forward to me writing it now, and I am ten days away from moving back to school and starting my senior year of college. Summer inches closer to an end, the future is practically banging down my door demanding I acknowledge its existence, and I can’t deny the anxiety that’s sitting like a rock in the pit of my stomach. The future is a lot like a text or Facebook message from someone you don’t like; the only difference is that it absolutely refuses to be ignored.
When I was a freshman in college, senior year seemed so far away. This time next year I will have a piece of paper that states I earned a degree in English from a state university. “So, you want to teach?” the adults will ask me and I will have to resist “accidentally” kicking someone in the shin.
The Olympic games happening in Rio right now astound me. Every single one of those athletes has been training for this their whole life. They had a plan from the time they were children and they followed it through all the way to the Olympics. They’ve had their whole life planned out to lead up to one moment. I’ve had almost the same amount of time to just come up with an idea.
I suppose we should all be embracing the “infinite” possibilities that lay ahead of us after we graduate. Or something. Honestly, I think it’s all the possibilities that make it so terrifying: too many options make it hard to decide. What if I make the wrong decision? People ask all these questions and I feel like I give a different answer every time, hoping that maybe if I change my answer enough I’ll eventually come up with a real idea of what my life is going to look like that I can be OK with.
“Plans.” Like, what does that even mean? It sounds like people expect me to have blueprints hidden somewhere that will explain to me The Correct Way To Adult. Trust me, I’ve Googled “What do I do with my life?” enough times to know that if a guidebook on how to survive adulthood existed, I would have found it by now.
Really, it’s the not knowing that’s scariest. If I could fast forward, or even have just one little peek at the ending to see how everything works out, I’d be OK with that. Then I could live my life knowing that everything works out for the better. Or not. Either way, I’d have an answer and I’d be comfortable with that. But, obviously, that’s not how life works. Everything’s a surprise until it’s not.
I think, for now, the future isn’t going to stop being scary. I think I’m also fine with not having a plan. I have ideas — I don’t have any intention of flying blind. But, I think the fact that nothing is set in stone for me yet is kind of a relief, because that means I have time to figure it out. Here’s my theory: not having a plan leads to fear, fear leads to panic, which leads to impulsive decisions you eventually regret, and decisions you regret lead to trapping yourself in a lifetime of unfulfillment. I’m not trying to trap myself or set unrealistic expectations for how I want the rest of my life to turn out. I’m not saying, “The plan is no plan.” I’m saying I’m OK with making the plan up as I go.
