There is something unusual about living in a time where you have no idea what is coming next, yet you feel as though the world is at your fingertips. It is an odd mixture between feeling completely free amongst a sea of possibilities yet also restricted by looming realities -- feeling incredibly youthful but also as though you have entered into the realm of adulthood.

This feeling seems to characterize a large part of the college experience or the general period of one’s life from their late teens through their early and mid-twenties, myself included. Your major may seem to narrow your path and specify the career or job that you are headed for, but your knowledge, learning and experiences could be applied in many ways to several areas of life. With these kind of opportunities, why wouldn’t you feel as though you’re on top of the world? You could go anywhere, do anything, and be anyone. It’s as though your life is just beginning.

But with so many options, this freedom can seem a little intimidating. Time is flying by as you try to get as much as you can out of your college experience, and your “adult” and “real world” future is not too far off in the distance. With so many choices as to where to go next, the pressure to make a decision on your next step and to meet the expectations of what others consider as “having your life together” is daunting.

There is something beautiful and thrilling, though, about being so vulnerable: about having it all in your grasp, yet having nothing that has been secured. You are somehow both committed to everything and committed to nothing at the same time, working toward a goal that can be changed whenever you see fit. And all of this means that this time in our lives -- this time of opportunities and chances -- is an opportunity in itself. It is an opportunity to try as much as we can, explore the many options that are available to us, participate in jobs or internships or fields of work that we have always imagined ourselves in -- or maybe ones that we never imagined ourselves doing before. The only way to know what we truly love doing is to know what we do not enjoy, and knowing what paths, fields or careers we do not want to pursue narrows down the seemingly limitless amount of possibilities before us.

This, then, is the time to experiment. Not only can we broaden our range of interests, but we may heighten our greatest passions -- or even discover that what we had always thought we dreamed of is not the best fit for us after all. This is the time of opportunity, and that is something that we should be taking complete advantage of.