Listen to this song while reading my post:

Believe: Yellowcard

I was always told my college years were going to fly by. I would nod my head in agreement, as if I really understood what I was being told. Now I am at the point of my life when I realize that everyone who ever told me this... was right. I am in my senior year of college and I am nervous. I've come to the conclusion that I'm not ready and I know I'm not alone. I'm sure there are students out there who have a plan, and for that I congratulate them. This girl however, does not. I used to freak myself out over this fact, and that anxiety hasn't completely disappeared. How am I supposed to step out into the real world without a plan? My answer to this question: with one foot in front of the other.

The future is unpredictable. We are not, nor will we ever be in control of it. We can have blueprints, outlines, spreadsheets, and maps for our future but things change. People will change, and plans will change. Plans need to be adjustable and not exact. I used to feel like I needed a plan that was exact and to the point. The plan goes a little like this: at t this time I will live here, and by this time I will have a dog..I will have this job and so on and so forth. However, we can't live like that. We are not giving ourselves enough room for change, or mishaps. I have ideas as to what I want to do but I am also making space for myself to grow. I know that we want the best job right away, but we need to work for that. We are not going to succeed right away.

Look, I'm not saying that I have life figured out...I really don't. I have the tendency to compare myself to others. I look at their success over my own and think about how far they will get and how behind I am. I start to throw my own pity party and I end up depressed and ultimately, negative. You see when you have a negative outlook on life, you really don't notice it. I've been told that my outlook on life isn't helpful to my overall mood. The ones closest to me fear for my negative thoughts. I just think it's realistic. It's not. No, I don't need to be completely optimistic . I need to be prepared for failure or the very fact that something isn't going to go my way. However accepting failure isn't a good outlook on life either. There needs to be a middle ground.

I had a discussion with someone very close to me about the future. I told them how afraid I was, and how I was worried because I didn't have a direction. The best advice I ever received was from them. They gave me a new outlook on life. One that says that life is going to take you wherever it wants to. I was told that you can't control everything and that everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the path that life takes you isn't the way you were expected to go. However it always works out in the end and the most unexpected ways. I think that life likes to test us. That it knows we like organization, that we will do anything to avoid the unknown, and that's why it's so hard.

Yes, I am afraid of the future, and that's okay. Everyone around me is afraid of where they are going to end up. However, I know that there is path that I am going to be thrown into. I am going to have to make it through the obstacles that lie ahead of me. The thought of failure isn't uncommon, but it's destructive. If I just let life take me where it wants to, I will be fine. My job is not to compare myself to others, it's to notice the successes in myself. I just need to take things one step at a time. If you are leery towards the future, just remember that we can't control everything. To quote the band Yellowcard: "Everything is going to be alright, be strong believe."