I have always been a worrier. I worry about every little detail, even when it means nothing, like when my professor sent an alternative assignment I didn't see until submission and then having to deal with the fact that I looked like the idiot when it was a simple fix. That lives within my anxiety ridden soul, but the bigger issues my life will soon face has me spiraling at maximum overdrive.
At 20 years old, I didn't think I would be as stressed out over graduation as I am. I'm plowing into my senior year at an incredible pace that has me thinking that science has been lying about there being 24 hours in a day. Graduation, as exciting as it may be, is actually really terrifying. It marks the end of my school journey for awhile, since I'm not allowing graduate school to enter my brain just yet. Graduation is terrifying because it means that I'm in the real world where I need to find a real job and start making real decisions, like starting to save for retirement or saving up any pennies I find on the street to go towards an emergency medical situation, or worse: my own medical insurance.
Will I find a job in the field I want? With statistics the way they are it is highly unlikely, at least for awhile. What if they job I am able to get does not pay enough for me to handle paying off my student loans? I am lucky because I have very little student loans I will need to pay back, compared to my fellow quarter life crisis members, yet it is still the cost of a brand new limited Chevy Crossover. The scariest part about a job and student loans, post-graduation, is wondering if I'll make enough money eventually to get my own humble abode. I love my mom more than life, but we both know I will one day need to fly from the nest. And the biggest question: what in the hell type of job do I want after graduation?
I lay in my bed at night and work myself up over everything in my life. Since going away for school, I have found myself feeling lost in who I am. I'm not the same girl I was in August 2015 getting ready to leave Maryland for the first extended period of time in my life and scared to death because of it. That girl got left behind in all the dorm crap that had to be crammed into every nook and cranny my mom's car could fit. I have emerged as someone I don't know how to describe. I've always had goals, but it's goals I can now see myself reaching and I'm setting brand new goals I never imagined, like living in a city with my roommate after graduation. But I feel that in shedding the layers of the person I once was comfortable being, I have unearthed brand new qualities that were always there and the brand new fears the life I am heading in will cause.
I don't need people to tell me everything will be okay because I need to figure that out myself and I will, once I get through all the scary things being a senior in college tends to expose. People have always told me to be a kid as long as I can and I wish I had listened just a little more because being a sooner-than-I-know-it "real" adult is proving to be the most difficult identity I have ever had, but I also know that on the other end is the person I have always been destined to become.
