Do you ever wonder what happened to all those big plans you had as a senior in high school and transitioning into a freshmen in college? I know I had more than my fair share of those, "Oh I have my life together" momentary lapses going into my first semester at Oklahoma State University. Going through formal fall recruitment my before my first semester solidified my thinking that I had my life together. In my mind, everything was super plain and simple: 1. Go to College. 2. Go to Law School. 3. Get married. 4. Move back home and open up a practice. Now, I'm not saying that all those things and more won't happen in the future, and if you have a plan like I had and went through with it to a T, then power to you, but life has a funny way of sneaking up on you and making your "plan" obsolete.

This year was the first year that I participated in formal fall recruitment from the recruiter side, and let me tell you, I had the time of my life. There was a point, as hard as it may be to believe, that I was a shy person who had a hard time opening up to people and I definitely never initiated a conversation. Now, as a 20 year old Kappa Delta woman, I have done a 180 and turned into this weird, morphed social butterfly who can talk to a brick wall. So yes, there is a possibility to get past social awkwardness like I did. Okay back to recruitment now. I talked to upwards of 40 girls over that week, and I felt so inspired by asking them what they wanted to do with their life, what they were passionate about, what they were involved in or what they wanted to get involved in, and what they saw their ideal character treat being. I spoke with one girl who, like me, was an aspiring lawyer. This was the first girl I had talked to who was pursuing a pre-law major, so I was instantly infatuated with her and wanted to know what made her want to pursue law and what kind of lawyer she wanted to be. Near the end of our conversation I finally got around to ask her the, "What makes you want to pursue a degree in law?" question. She sat there for a moment and replied, "I want to make a difference, and not just like picking up trash on the side of the road, anyone can do that. But I want to shape and mold someone's life for the better" and that hit me like a bag of bricks. Wasn't this girl me just a year ago? Hadn't I told many girls that same thing only a year ago when I was going through recruitment?

Recruitment photoAuthors photo

After that round was over and I had said goodbye, I still wasn't over that feeling of, that was me a year ago, that's who I wanted to be today. Someone who had made a difference, someone who was sure of what she wanted out of life. But I am not. I haven't made a difference, I'm sure of what I want, I am not sure of what I want to be in this life anymore, I'm stressed, I'm busy, I'm not involved enough, I don't have enough friends, I'm not skinny enough, I AM ALONE. So as I was sitting there having my little pity party, being down in the dumps and borderline anxious over everything, I thought back to where I was a year ago, top of my class, semi-popular girl in a high school of roughly 400, in a town of somewhere around 5000. I would be crazy to think that things would have been the same now as there were then. Everything is so black and white in high school, especially in a small town high school like where I'm from. But I am reminded everyday that I am not alone in this process. There are thousands of students at Oklahoma State who feel like they have it all together, and those same students will probably be thrown a curve ball in the next year or so, changing their plan. And that is okay. It's okay to not know what you want to do with your future, because who even knows what tomorrow will bring?

So bringing this long monologue about the failings of Hannah Hart's plan to a close, all I have to say is you never are really truly alone in life. College is hard, man. It's hard to decide what you want to be for the rest of your life as an incoming freshmen with little to no prior knowledge or experience in that field. I'll close with one piece of advice, write down your perfect plan, your ideal plan, on a piece of paper. Once you have everything you can possibly think of written down in the order you want them to happen. Now, seriously, destroy it. Rip it up, crumple it, set it on fire, because that's what life is. We all come into this new stage of our life bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to conquer the world. Trust me when I say, you will fail, you'll probably fail a lot in your first year, at least I did, that's for sure. I'm not 100% if it get's better, but when I know, you'll know.

Let's do this people.