I remember the first time someone asked me what my five year plan was. It was my first semester of college and I was feeling ambitious. I had had my plan down: by 2019 I would be a touring artist selling out arenas. I would have recorded an album by then, I would have a serious boyfriend, but not too serious because I wasn’t getting married until I was 28 (at the youngest). My life would be based out of Nashville because I moved here knowing I would never leave. And I would be over all of my past emotional baggage by that time, all of it seeming like this distant dream remembered more as a blur than reality.
Some people enter and exit college with the exact plan that they started with.
Then there’s the rest of us: I don’t know if we are the worst off or the most exciting.
Since the beginning of high school, I’ve had this placed on me that by the time I graduated with my bachelor’s degree I would have everything figured out. Society also tends to give us deadlines and set expectations that feel agonizing at times.
I can also remember a high school teacher telling me that most music majors at Belmont don’t graduate because if they’re any good they get picked up by record labels or publishing deals before they can go through all four years. And here I am, a senior, still chugging along into my last semester!
For the longest time, I felt like I was behind in the game because I realized halfway through freshman year that there were way different dreams in my heart and expectations way different than the ones I had gone into college having for myself . Then those dreams took a different shape during my sophomore year of college and I remember crying to my SO at the time and feeling like I should just quit and go back to my original plan because it was so much easier. The plan that I had had since middle school felt like it was falling apart and it felt like I was disappointing my parents, my peers, and most of all, myself because of it. How the hell was I supposed to have everything together by the end of my senior year if I didn’t even have a clue what direction I was heading towards? And how was I going to deal with the backlash that comes with making a major change of pace that not everyone agrees with?
For all of us who have no idea what even our one year plan looks like- it is 100 percent okay if you don’t have everything figured out.
You’re allowed to be vulnerable. You’re allowed to change your major four times. You’re allowed to take a job completely unrelated to what you studied in college.
You’re allowed to move back to your hometown or stay in the city you went to college in. You’re allowed to move to Los Angeles or move to the middle of nowhere in Montana.
You’re allowed to not have your dream job immediately after graduation. You’re allowed to live with your parents or a studio apartment or with 4 roommates or sleeping on a friend’s couch. You’re allowed to be sad and single or engaged or married or a mother of 10 cats or maybe not even looking for a SO.
No two stories look the exact same, so don’t let anyone tell you you’re behind, ahead, or nowhere close to the schedule. You’re right on time.
You’re allowed to feel. You’re allowed to take your time. You’re allowed to change course. You’re a human and you’re allowed to be one.
Take it day by day, and be thankful for the exact moment and space you’re in. You are not a disappointment, you are exactly what you are meant to be, where you are meant to be.
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