If I had to guess the saddest word in the English dictionary, I think it would be the word “almost”. It is the word I’m most fearful of. For centuries it has marred sentences on the brink of bliss. They almost lived happily ever after. She almost got that job. He almost graduated. They were almost successful. Each sentence is better without it, but it must grudgingly be there for unfortunate contextual accuracy.
During graduation year, the fear in most is that this sad little word will creep into our circumstance. Graduation year feels like a few months of limbo between attainment and failure. No one wants to fail. No one wants to almost make it. And sometimes that “almost” feels so inevitable. What most know, but don’t realize, is how much control you really do have. How you can push that almost away and really, truly make it.
Going into your first year of college the word seems limitless. Your university makes you feel as though anything is possible. You feel talented, empowered, and passionate. You surround yourself with circles of people that believe in the same things you do, and also circles that challenge those beliefs. You have moments in lectures where you hear something for the first time and realize that you’ve been looking at the world in the wrong way. Your perception changes. Your ideals change. You change. You feel you can do anything. You want to change the world the way you’ve been changed.
And then, somewhere around your junior or senior year, you lose it. Maybe you change to a safer major, or you don’t apply for that internship because “you’ll never get it anyways”, and with that, that little flutter of excitement in your gut when you think about the future goes away. I would call this “being realistic”: the ultimate cure for a case of “almost” fears.
We have this feeling that everyone else has it more together than we do. They have more experience, better grades, or more bullets on their resume. We have this idea that somehow we’re behind everyone else and catching up seems like a pipe dream. We don’t feel like we measure up. So, we go with what’s safe instead of what we really want because getting that safe job is better than almost getting that dream job.
The reality is you do measure up. Maybe you won’t get that dream job the first time you apply, but you have time. You have time to make changes, to get that second bachelor’s degree you feel you should’ve gotten the first time, to try that internship you never applied for. You have time to shape and mold your life. You're 20-something years old, there is nothing but time. Don’t let the fear of “almost” stop you from really, truly making it.
