The holidays can serve as a somewhat stressful time for most people. Generally, the anxiety revolves around not knowing what to get fellow family members for Christmas gifts or agonizing over how much weight you’re going to gain from all of mom’s cooking.
However, for college students, there’s a different kind of stress that seems to creep in around the holidays, and that is the stress of the dreaded question, “So, what’s your plan?”
I love my family, but I do not love this question. As a college junior entering her second semester, there’s only one thing I can confidently say about my life plan: I don’t have one. I may have some ideas about the field that I am interested in or be able to discuss various internships I am applying to for the summer, but ask me about my life plan and you’re not going to get much.
I’ve spent a lot of time the past several weeks trying to decide how I want to approach this question.
Do I want to do what I have always done and respond with the classic, “Well, as an English major, I have a few options, but right now, I think the most appealing ones are….?” or, am I finally going to embrace that I don’t actually know, and be prepared to deal with the additional questions that may result from my uncertainty?
Based on the title of this article, I’m sure you can guess what I decided.
It can be extremely difficult to admit that you don’t have a life plan, not just because it makes you sound/seem unorganized or uncertain about life, but also because it can convince you that you aren’t as far ahead as everyone else.
Reminder: a majority of people at this stage in their lives have absolutely NO idea what they are going to do after graduation. Moreover, newly graduated students sometimes don’t even know, and that is absolutely OK.
Regardless of what your major is, or what year you are in school, if your holidays are anything like mine, you know you have to be prepared to talk about your future plan. Rather than having a complete panic over this and allowing ourselves to succumb to anxiety about answering such questions, why not just own the truth? We don’t have a life plan.
We don’t know what kind of job we are going to obtain, we don’t know what city we are going to live in, and we really don’t know what company we are going to work for. There is absolutely no possible way we can predict where we are going to end up or what we are going to be doing, so why try?
Instead of responding with some answer about the possible routes we might be interested in going down, why not just own the fact that we have no idea- similar to how most of our relatives felt at our age- and say, “Honestly, I really don’t have a plan, I still have some time to decide and I’m keeping my options open.”
It’s scary to admit that we don’t know the exact direction our life is headed in, but it’s common, and it’s OK. Don’t allow yourself to get worked into a frenzy this season by panicking at the curiosity your family has on what your life looks like.
At 20, 21, or 22, you may not have a life plan, and not only am I here to tell you that’s OK, but also to remind you: you are not alone.
