Welcome to the club! You are not the only one who has had a plan since she was fifteen years old about how she wants her life to look like for the next fifteen years. I think most of us do; it’s what we’re told we should be doing. Unfortunately, those plans create so many problems that took me until twenty to realize.
I spent the entirety of high school preparing for college so I could major in economics and political science and go to law school so that I could possibly make it in politics one day. I didn’t go to a single football game until my junior year and I hardly kissed a boy until after graduation. Now, I’ve seen countless movies about the nerdy kids in high school going all out their senior year once they had realized they missed out on so many experiences. As much as I have wished I had seen those movies five years ago, I’ve also learned that the past is not worth being anything more than nostalgic about. See, whether or not all my preparation will work out the way I had intended, it still got me here.
And while all that holds true now, I have spent the past three years of college worried about how I can force my future to look exactly like what I had imagined. Now, I’m two semesters away from graduation and have no idea if I still want the same things (I mean, I’m writing an article for an online magazine for college women). But I did everything right. This was not part of my plan. I declared both majors my freshman year and added on the minor shortly after. I stuck to it all, kept my grades up, and didn’t walk under the clock tower, and I’ll even graduate on time. Pretty soon I’ll be expected to line up more plans for after graduation even though I don’t know what I want for dinner tonight.
I used to hear from people that college is not about the degree — “It’s about the experience and finding yourself”— but I called bullshit. I was going to school to get the career I had envisioned for myself. Flash forward to now, and I know those people were right, or at least had a point. This really bites when it comes with such a high price tag. If college is not about a degree, am I wasting money to just “grow into myself”? It’s definitely a possibility. But, the point of me writing this is not to complain about how expensive college is or question whether it’s worth it. Although, I do think the steep price adds to the pressure we all feel to succeed at our plans, which is the point I actually want to drive home.
Stop making plans! (Except with friends.) Things never go according to plan, so we always are setting ourselves up for disappointment. I don’t necessarily mean that in how things turn out, I mean in ourselves, for not living up to the expectations we set at fifteen. What we want is allowed to change. Despite the number of courses I’ve taken, I think that was the most important thing I’ve learned in college.