Futures are scary.
Even though most everyone has a future of some sort, not many people seem to have a stable idea of how to navigate them. They are full of the unknown and they come with a lot of really hard questions. The biggest and scariest question about my future right now is the question of what I’m going to be doing after I graduate college in the next year and a half.
There’s a lot of pressure for college kids to come right out of school and have a 50-year plan full of bullet points, goals, job offers, and subsections that they’re going to stick to. But the reality of that is small. Even if I was able to tell you what 40-year old me would want out of life, that doesn’t mean that I would be able to make it happen. So why do I need such a set-in-stone plan for so far away?
This is not me bashing on planning and preparation. In fact, I think plans are helpful and I wish that I was more of a planner. But this weekend, a friend of mine said something that really stuck with me. She made the comment that when she plans, she usually thinks it has to be a plan that has to be a long-term commitment, but she realized that doesn’t have to be the case. She realized that it’s ok to only have a plan for the next handful of years.
That stuck with me!
It was such a good perspective to have! We are so young and we have so much time. Many people graduate college at the age of 22/23. That is not even half of the average lifespan in America. Why are we so pressured to make such long lasting decisions when we are so young?
I am double majoring and am fortunate to have a good variety of job opportunities when I graduate, yet many of those options only interest me in the short term. That stresses me out. It makes me feel like I am failing because, unlike society’s expectations and standards, I don’t think I will have a fully formed, life-long plan for myself as soon as I flip my tassel from one side of my cap to the other.
But that’s ok!
I will still have time to figure it out, and in the meantime, I can stick to the short-term plans that interest me that I had previously written off. These shorter-term jobs I think will actually help me in the long term, giving me a variety of experience that I can then put to good work when I finally do figure out my long term plan.
So go dip your fingers into multiple pies!
Go for that two-year internship or go for that job you can’t see yourself doing for more than three years. Experience the world, figure out what job aspects you like and what ones you don’t like. Create stories and experiences, gain a strong and diverse skill set. Learning to be ok with only having a plan for the next five years instead of the next fifty is the best plan and goal of all.