COLUMN: It's all part of the plan
Does anyone really know what they want while they’re in college?
People jump from major to major, person to person and one decision to the next.
We want more. Wait, no, we want less.
It’s like when you go to the lake for the first time in the beginning of summer when you haven’t felt water like that in months. You dip your toe in, and the cold waves scare you off, running back to dry land. But you’re laughing, because it’s fun and scary and all a little exciting.
In a way, that's kind of just like college.
You meet hundreds of new people and can lead your life into endless directions.
Freshman year, you come to this grand ol’ place and think “this is it.” Take classes, maybe find a part-time job, meet my future partner, graduate, get married, have kids, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Nope.
It’s more like … “Holy crap, what the hell am I doing?” Every. Single. Day.
No one knows where he or she is going. For a split second, you might feel like you know. But then something usually happens, and it’s back to the starting line.
Do I go to graduate school after graduation or try to find a full-time job? Do I try to make this relationship work, even though we only see each other while school is in session? Do I travel the country trying to find myself? Am I good enough for this career? Should I even be here?
We all ask them and all secretly wish someone would knock on our door, hand us a paper and say, “This is your life, and this is the plan.”
But no one has invented that type of technology or super-freak human just yet.
So, what do we do?
We mess up … a lot. We tell people we love them, then treat their hearts like monkey meat. We stay up way too late thinking about the future and sometimes lie in bed crying about it. We make rash decisions and immediately regret them.
But, we have to do this.
It’s all a part of figuring out who we are, so when we do receive that shiny, (well, maybe we just hope it’s somewhat shiny) diploma, we know what to do.
Or at least, we sort of feel like we know.
