I have been alive for 18 years and 8 months. I know that’s not as long as the adults in my life, or even the twenty-something’s that I know, and I am not saying I know everything that there is to know, because I don’t, but no one really does either.

When I started college I was so excited to start – to start taking classes that would pertain to my major, to start looking for (and hopefully getting) and internship, to start studying abroad. I wanted to do it all, and I did not want to wait.

If we are being honest with ourselves, we have all experienced a time when we were so excited to do something, to try something, to be something, that we could not stop thinking about, but we didn’t start because we were “waiting for the right time”, and 5 years later we have clung to the excuse that it is still not “the right time”.

But that’s exactly what it is. An excuse. Yes, it’s scary. Yes, it may end horribly. You may feel like you are unqualified or unprepared, or you keep saying that you are scared about what you’re getting yourself into, but even the most prepared people can never fully be sure of what they are getting into.

In my opinion, those that take risks are those that are most happy. I am tired of the phrase, “wait for the right time,” because there is no such thing as the right time. What you have right now is enough. I read an article the other day that said, “progress begins at the end of your comfort zone”, and that phrase has stuck with me since.

I am now a month away from being done with my freshman year of college and because I didn’t “wait for the right time,” I have been able to accomplish so much.

In a month not only will I have completed my first year at an awesome university, but I will also have completed my first internship and my first semester of being a writer for a social media platform that in one month added more than 1 million new readers every week.

Because I didn’t “wait for the right time” I can now say that I applied, was accepted to, and will be travelling to London this summer to study abroad. I finally created the blog I have always wanted to, and I am in the process of finally learning how to code.

I am saying this to hopefully motivate both the younger and older generations to stop waiting and just start. If 18-year-old me can start then you can too.

Every person that you have met has at some point been afraid of starting and failing. The difference is that some people surpassed their fears and gave in to their determinations and aspirations – those are the people that you hear stories about and applaud.

The “right time” will never come, so stop waiting and start.