When I grow up, I have no idea what my life will be like. There. I said it. Not a clue. For the first time in my life I don’t know what comes next. In middle school I knew that there was high school on the horizon. In high school I knew that I was going continue my education at a university and major in Journalism. Now the future is big question mark. The paths that we can take after graduation seem infinite. For the first time our futures are completely up to us.
For someone like me who is a big planner, this has given me a touch of anxiety. I like to know what’s coming so I can prepare for it. But we can never really guarantee our success or that we will get our dream job. All that we can do make sure that the odds are in our favor. We can work hard and do well in our classes and get involved with clubs and internships. We can make connections and reach out to people on LinkedIn. But ultimately there are a lot of things that are outside of our control.
But then I realized that this should excite us instead of worry us. In the future, every decision we make will be solely ours. We can travel the world, eat cookies for dinner, adopt a cat (or ten), watch bad reality tv, go skydiving, be amazing at our jobs, buy cute clothes with our own money that we earned while being amazing at our jobs. It’ll be a kind of freedom that we have never experienced before.
So to all of you collegiates worrying about their futures, here’s a tip: Don’t. If we mess up we can start over again, and if we achieve amazing success then we can help other girls reach their potential. We have so much time to figure everything out.