To the High School Senior with no plans yet,

Christmas break must have been a relief. Done with finals, done with school, (mostly) done with applications, and a few good weeks of stress-free fun. But with break almost over, that stress is probably rearing its head again.

It’s your last semester of senior year – your last semester of high school, ever. You’re waiting to hear back from those applications with baited breath along with all your other classmates and the conversations about deadlines and SATs and acceptances never seem to stop. That guy in your math class got his Early Decision acceptance back in November. And the captain of the basketball team? He got recruited for Division II Athletics at his top choice at the beginning of the year. And that girl in Spanish? She’s had her entire college life planned out since the first day of freshman year.

Everyone has their favorite, their dream school, their plan. Everyone seems to know exactly what they want. Everyone except you. You answer those questions about colleges and majors and future plans with the mainstream generic answers. You don’t have a top choice school because you barely know what you’re doing for the summer, never mind the next four years and the rest of your life. You’re seventeen, maybe eighteen years old and within the next four months you’re expected to make a decision that will set you on course for the rest of your life, and you have no clue how you’re supposed to plan ahead when you have no idea what you want. But you know what?

It’s okay. It really is okay to not know. You’re a teenager, and despite what everyone else may be saying or doing or thinking, you don’t have to know what you want to do with the rest of your life right now. These are the years where you’re meant to explore, to experiment, to try new things, and starting off with a blank slate only paves the way for you to consider options you might have never even known you had.

You will get into college. You will figure out what you want to study. And if college isn’t what you want, then you willfigure out what you do want. Trust me. Maybe you did have a dream school, but your dream was shattered with a 200-word rejection letter. You know what? It just wasn’t your place; it wasn’t your future, but wherever you settle will be the place where you’ll be happiest. Things always have a way of working out, and you will end up where you’re meant to be, as cliché and ridiculous as it sounds.

Don’t compare yourself to other people. Odds are they’re just as lost and confused as you are. Stay focused on what you do know, and trust that you’ll eventually figure out what you don’t. It works out in the end, no matter the route you take to get there.

Sincerely,

A girl with no idea what she’s doing after college.