Senior Scaries

Spooky season is beginning to creep up on us but what has begun to creep up on me is graduation. This December I graduate from the prestigious Virginia Tech and while this is a beautiful accomplishment, there are fears associated with the reality that I will no longer be an undergrad in college. Questions surface such as “What will post grad be like?” Senior scaries are real, but there is beauty in the unknown because you can shape your future as you like and that future is life as we know it. 

As December approaches the fears come and go because you ask yourself if your next step is where you’re meant to be and yes, it’s exactly where you’re meant to be. So for me that means taking a gap year, and I think that’s the scariest part because a year is a long time, yet so short. You never know what opportunities arise within that timeframe, and so it’s my goal to always keep my eye on my goals as of now but be open minded to others if the come.  

What I have done to combat my fears of the future is prepare for what I know I can control. During my gap year I will be working and gaining many clinical hours to place onto my resume. What I tell myself is that this job is a wonderful experience and a temporary one at the same time. My goal is to fully soak in all the experiences I have within my job to truly find and stabilize my why, my purpose, and my reason for a career in medicine. Along with this I will be shadowing. These experiences may not be a part of my entire life, but they are a part of my journey, and they deserve to be treated as such.  

I have also told myself to do things I have never had the chance to do before whether that be traveling more, soaking up more time with friends, finding a passion and diving deep into it, or very specifically gaining volunteer hours in a position that I truly care about. I want to dedicate my time to all the areas of life that are of importance to me. And within this, I want to continue to be a learner even outside of a set school schedule. I want to choose topics that I adore and become an expert on them through podcasts, books, or daily lessons because I have always been a learner and I want to always be a learner no matter what age or what state of life I am in. I want to be a woman who is multifaceted and educated well. I want to know a variety of different things and be a specialist in the things that mean the most to me.  

At the end of my gap year, I say now I will be applying to physician assistant school and while I can’t wait, I also want to be in a position where I am fully and absolutely prepared including my interview skills and my experiences. So yes, while senior scaries are so prominent in my life and I don’t know exactly where I will end up, I will be treating each experience as meaningful because they are and I will keep being the same person I have always been, because being in or out of college does not change the trajectory of the life you want to make for yourself. Life doesn’t end at 20 and it doesn’t start at 30. Life is now.