As a college junior, I have not had the same anxieties about the future that I had as a high school junior or senior.

No, now my stressors are worse. Now, they have multiple heads to draw me away from the task at hand.

In high school, there was no doubt for me that I would go to a four-year University after I graduated. College isn't for everyone but it was definitely the path I wanted to take. I applied to several, toured a few, and chose one. I finished my senior year of high school and came to High Point University. The first two years were more or less smooth and I feel confident saying that I made the right choice.

But that's not what I'm worried about right now.

Instead of worrying about the choices I have made in the past, I am worried about the choices that I will make in the upcoming years. I'm stressed about the choices that will help determine my career, my success, my future.

Unlike my junior year of high school, I don't have a clear path in mind for my plans after graduation. After I finish my time at High Point University, I have so many options in mind that I can't keep a clear focus on one. I can't make up my mind.

I'm starting to find myself in the middle of a ramped-up Frost poem, standing at the convergence of about twenty different paths and struggling with the decision of which to take.

Everyone always boasts about the opportunities made available for High Point students and they are right, there is an enormous abundance of opportunities for marketing and networking yourself. That's the problem: for those of us that are very indecisive, it's nearly impossible to choose one.

I think it is safe to say that I have obviously fallen in love with my school because of the English faculty. Even though I am a part of an extremely small major at a school that attracts predominantly Business, Communications, and Science majors, I have found a great group of individuals that have helped me not only grow as a student but as a person as well. I can't thank the faculty enough for all that they have done for me in the past two and a half years, not even if I tried.

However, they have started a storm of ideas in my brain. Trying my hand at leadership in the English Club? Sure! Submitting papers to academic journals across the country? Of course! Joining editorial boards and applying for internships? Um, yes, please! Trying for an MFA? Maybe. Ph.D.? What the hell.

There are so many amazing opportunities that I am having a hard time deciding what I can manage, both in terms of time and finance.

I have always been, for lack of a better word, a nerd. For as long as I can remember, I have loved school. Math has always given me difficulties but reading, writing, and even science have always been there to make up for it.

Over the years, I have watched myself get progressively "nerdier" by getting in trouble for reading in class, for doing the homework ahead of time, for writing a paper that was two pages past the page limit, for reading academic journals in my spare time just because I have an admitted addiction to JStor, indulged by the HPULibraries system.

It just makes it that much harder to decide where I want to end. Do I really want to be "done with school" after my undergrad years? Do I want to do a little extra and go for the MFA?

Do I want to go all in and consider a Ph.D.?

There are just so many options and, with each of those options, I'm continually overwhelmed with even more options jutting off in all different directions. They keep coming and coming and coming and...

"Meagan, relax. You have time."

Another thing that has made my decision-making process (or lack thereof) easier is reminding myself "you don't have to know right now". There is still time to make these decisions and it's okay to not know right now, as long as I keep my options in mind and focus on the now.

Focusing on the now isn't always easy but it's definitely worth it.

Focusing on the now reminds me why I fell in love with school in the first place. I fell in love with school because I love discovering what else is in the world, the things that I don't get to see in my everyday life as well as those that I do get to see but do not realize it.

I have found that I can discover so many new ideas and feelings through reading and not only from reading classical literature. I've learned that I can find interest in just about any field if I just narrow down to the ideas that interest me. From there, I find new ways to express them in my writing.

My interest in school is like a scavenger hunt, I like the challenge, and I have chosen to accept the challenge to not stress too much about what's to come.

School has opened my eyes not only to the possibilities of academia but the possibilities of life in general. It's taught me to be okay with not knowing because there's always a time, a place, and a way to find out about the things I don't already know.