There are certain expectations that we start college with: we will make enough friends to fill up a ballroom; we will spend our days in cafes and our nights in the library, and our grades will reflect that; we will get seventeen paid internships and set ourselves up for success; we will wake up on a random Tuesday in November and know exactly who we are and how we want to craft our futures.
By no means is it a crime to assume that college will be your yellow brick road, but it also isn’t a shame to be disappointed in college by self-proclaimed prophecies that have yet to be fulfilled.
I started at Temple incredibly confused about who I was and who I wanted to be. I thought that by the end of my first semester, all of my visions would be clearer, and all of my confusions would be resolved. Fast forward a year and a half later: many of my visions are still blurry and many of my confusions are still unresolved. It’s February, and I am a sophomore. But yesterday it was August, and I was a freshman. Where did the time go and what have I done with it?
It is especially daunting and humbling to see other people my age with accomplishments that feel out of arm’s reach for me- maybe even out of arm and leg’s reach.
So lately I’ve been stuck in a rut, getting frustrated and down on myself for not “doing enough” to propel myself forward. But lately I’ve also been listening to a lot of Alanis Morisette. My morning walks are accompanied by my Beats and “Hand in My Pocket” playing through them – we all know the song, but if you have not listened to it recently, I’d suggest playing it now.
It’s easy to put pressure on yourself when you’re eighteen, or nineteen, or even twenty, and it feels like you’re expected to have things figured out. We worry so much about our long-term goals and what our lives will look like at thirty, or forty, or seventy-five. It’s important to feed and fuel those goals, but it’s also just as important to create short-term goals that are representative of who you are today. They may not seem like they’ll have much of an influence on your long-term goals, but they don’t have to. Make a pretty craft for your room! Plant a garden! Try every Iced Chai in the city until you find one that cleanses your soul. Do the things you want to do—the things that you’ve been putting off to make time and space for what might seem more “productive”.
It’s important to look into the future, but try not to look too far to the point that you lose sight of who you are today. The best way to prepare yourself for who you’ll be is to spend time getting to know yourself now; without expectation, without pressure. You don’t need to know everything; it’s beneficial to explore different avenues with no idealized expectation of where those streets might lead you.
Picture yourself, lost, standing in the middle of City Hall: there are so many roads to be taken, all of them leading to different places. You can look down those streets, but you can only see so far. You might have to go down three, or four, or ten streets before you find the one that takes you where you belong. You might need to take a few left turns. You might go in a circle. You might find out that the street you need to walk down isn’t even in Philly! Just start walking, and you’ll end up where you’re meant to be eventually.
It might take some time to get there, but don’t forget to look around and admire where you are while you’re there, even if you’re not on the street you’re meant to be on. What did Alanis Morisette say?
“Everything’s gonna be fine, fine, finnnnneeee.”