As college students we constantly endure the ever-nauseating question, "So, what do you want to do?" We rack our brains and try to figure out a polite but vague answer and we usually just reply with what our major is at the time. The question is simple, but we hear, "What are you going to do for the rest of forever, and how are you going to make money and survive?" The answer isn't quite as simple.
We are freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and even seniors. We're new at this. The amount of credits we've taken shows our competence for a particular job, but not for our biggest job yet: life. There's no class you can take that shows you how to be kind, to chase after your dreams or to admit your mistakes. We learn along the way in a world that tells us we have to know NOW.
But we don't know. The guy who's majoring in engineering doesn't know. The girl who is embarking on her first student-teaching job doesn't know. Because we haven't been there yet. And that's okay. Being scared is one of the greatest things about being young. It keeps us grounded and humble and it forces us to get to know ourselves in a way nobody else knows us. We make a lot of mistakes and we are thrown into the consequences of those mistakes every day. We lose friends and we break up with our significant others, but at the end of the day we can't get away from ourselves. It's the most awful and beautiful thing about this time in our lives.
The time to mess up is now. We should be questioning everything around us and stop apologizing for our opinions. We need to stand up for what is right, for our future and for ourselves. We need to be unique, but stand together. And most importantly, we have to learn to be wrong and admit that we have absolutely no idea what we're doing.
Perhaps the most valuable thing we learn in these four years is that we really don't know what we're going to do for the rest of our lives. We learn about ourselves, and in turn that guides us to what we're supposed to do. Let's stop being so concerned with getting a perfect grade and doing what everyone tells us we're good at. Think about what it is that you want out of your experience every day and get it.
The next time someone asks you what you are going to do for the rest of eternity, confidently admit the truth. You don't know, but you will. Do whatever it is you're doing because it's working. If it's not working, change something. Be happy. Live the way you want to live and if you can't, then adjust yourself so you can get there. You don't have all the answers, but you have time to figure it out. You got this.
