It seems like just yesterday I was moving into my freshman dorm at Stony Brook, with way too much luggage in the trunk of my dad's car and an overwhelming eagerness for the next chapter of my life to unfold. Now I'm a month away from completing half of my junior year as a college student and all I want is to push the restart button.

How did time pass me by so quickly? It felt like I was spending the last three years bored out of my mind in Javits Lecture Hall and now suddenly I'm scrambling to find an internship. Older adults always like to remind emerging adults that high school and college years fly by, but I didn't want to believe them. Honestly, I'm not ready to leave college just yet.

Graduating means that I need to get an actual job, not just seasonal work in a restaurant or retail store for the holidays or over the summer. I would need to get a job in my career field - something that would propel me quicker to being the therapist I always dreamed of being. But am I ready for that yet? Undergraduate studies prepared me for nothing, and graduate school is a whole other animal I have to tackle. Not to mention the GRE, which I haven't even began to look into.

Now when I look at it all accumulated together, I can't believe I haven't had a panic attack yet.

I think what's most jarring is that high school felt like just yesterday still, and the thought of graduating and finding full-time employment as a psychologist seemed like something so far off in the future that I'm having trouble integrating it into my plans for the near future instead of the distant future. I can no longer put things off, stating that I no longer need to worry about it - all my procrastination caught up with me and I have to get shit done now.

But despite it all, I'm not worried. My plan for my life might be slightly murky now, but I have hope that everything will fall into place. I'm learning to take it one day at a time instead of my usual habit of doing everything all at once and then breaking down when it proves to be overwhelming. I'm growing up - not as fast as the education system would like me to, but I'm doing it on my own terms.