As many of my readers are, I’m a young woman. For me, that entails me being a good student, an English/writing tutor, an intern, a friend, a daughter, and a roommate. We are all just human people trying to make it through. So, I’m pretty fed up with people in my life resenting my busy schedule.
In college, we enter a period of life where we start to understand ourselves much more and develop a stronger sense of self. I have learned who I am, while understanding that my experiences will continue to change me and make me grow as a person. I try to live in the moment when I’m around people, but in my free alone time (which I cherish), I spend a lot of it thinking about every aspect of my future. Because the future is kind of scary. We are very close to the next stage of our lives, where we am not college students anymore. Being the youngest of my entire extended family, I sort of always felt like I would never fully grow up. However, it’s coming, and it’s not slowing down for me to be ready for it. I don’t know if everyone my age feels the way I do- in fact, I’m sure not everyone does. Well personally, I am just so damn curious what the future holds for me that I can’t stop thinking about it; it’s unpredictability mystifies me.
To make myself feel better about not being able to control my future, I try to control my future. Haha, sorry. What I mean is that I plan for it. I try very hard to get good internships, good grades, maintain a healthy social life and be nice, all in hopes that this will help and prepare me to get a good job when I graduate. I care about the life I lead now because I want to get a good job. I want to have a career, and I am ambitious about my career because my mom was. As a woman, it is hard to be ambitious about your career because a lot of people wonder why you want a career so bad (because you should want a husband and a family more.) Both of my parents do what they love, and they are successful at it, giving me hope that I can be, too. To that extent, both of my parents work incredibly hard to be able to send my sisters and I to college, and I don’t take that privilege lightly. That’s why, like many of my girlfriends and coworkers, my schedule is jam-packed with a full course load, working in the writing center, and interning. We have high expectations for ourselves, and we don’t always meet them, but we try to persevere. As a woman in a male-dominant society (sorry, but it really is true), its important to surround yourself with empowering women.
So, I’m not apologizing and feeling sorry for staying busy. In my life there have been many, both men and women, who have made me feel weird for being career-oriented, for speaking my mind and for having smart opinions. I dont like being made to feel that is wrong. There’s nothing wrong with me because I try to plan for my future, and there’s nothing wrong with people who have different plans than I do, but everyone should stop apologizing for doing what they want.