What do you want to do with your life? As a college senior, I find that question even harder and harder to avoid. My parents ask me, my family ask me, my advisors ask me, and sometimes I even think my cat might ask me. That one stupid little question is the basis of my existence and I don't even have an answer.
With four months left until graduation, everyone assumes that I've got it all figured out. Everyone assumes that over the course of these four years, 8 semesters, and countless learning experiences that I have the rest of my life planned out. I mean, sure, I learned a lot in college, but I didn't learn it all. I am sad to report that although I could explain to you how sustainability benefits a business model or how to calculate financial ratios for a company or how there's so much more to feminism than white feminism leads us to believe, I sadly never got the chance to take a course in seeing into the future. I never got the chance to learn what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
I always thought it was normal for someone to know exactly what they wanted to do with their life. From the time I entered school at the age of five, that has been the question. What do you want to be when you grow up? First it was a dentist, then lawyer, interior designer, fashionista, and dermatologist. As a five year old, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do. How hard could it be to decide? I mean really, I just wake up one morning and say, "Hey, I think my life calling might be to save endangered marine life," and I just go out and do that. But I did not stay five forever, and the older I got the more I realized that there was more to a career than just picking one.
I'm four months away from graduating college. I'm four months away from entering the real world. The one thing that I know for sure is that if I'm waiting for the morning that I wake up and I suddenly know what I want to do with my life, it is never going to happen. There is no career fairy that is going to come in the middle of the night and slip my perfect career under my pillow. I'm not going to find my life calling through a career match test. I'm not going to find it sitting at home, or by googling career choices.
It took me about 20 years, but I finally understand that no one really knows exactly what they want to do with the rest of their life. The reality of it is, that no one knows what they want to do with their life, until they've lived it. I can't decide what I want to do with my life if I don't know what is out there.
It isn't normal for someone to know exactly what they want to do for the next 35 years when they've only been alive for 20 years. It's okay that I don't know what I want to do with my life. I'm only 21 years old, I still have so much more to do, so much more to see, and so much more to learn.
We all take life a little too seriously. We act as if the path we choose is the only path we can ever take. We forget that we have the power to change whenever we want.
I don't know what I want to do with the rest of my life, but I know that the rest of my life will work out exactly the way it is supposed to. The universe works in mysterious ways. I know that in life one thing leads to another and everything can change in an instant.
Sure a career straight out of college would be comfortable and secure, but I don't want to be comfortable. I don't want to settle. I want to live an extraordinary life. I want to get a taste of all that life has to offer me. I want to see the world, see what I like.
I think that finding your path in life is a lot like falling in love; you'll find your path once you stop looking for it. I'm finding that it's less about figuring out what you want to do with your life, and more about living your life. Life presents itself with amazing opportunities, and we need to take them. We spend too much time thinking about the future, and not enough time seeing the present.
You don't need to know exactly what you want to do. All you need to do is live your life, and it will all work out. The universe has a funny way of making things happen exactly as they should.
As I get closer and closer to graduation, I have decided to leave with an open mind. I've applied to graduate school. I've applied to all kinds of jobs in all kinds of places. I know that whatever opportunity that presents myself to me will lead me exactly where I need to be.
I want to stop being asked what do I want to do with the rest of my life and instead I want to see where life will take me.
