A few weeks ago, I was on the phone with one of my best friends, having a “my life is not going the exact way I wanted it to go” meltdown. She mentioned something she had realized recently, that most people do not have their lives figured out for the next eight-plus years. As pre-meds, we both marveled. I was surprised by how otherworldly it seemed not to have life all planned out and figured out.
And yet, we are all pressured to have the answers to some extent. Even in small talk, people expect us to have ourselves and our lives planned out.
“So what are you going to do after college?”
“I’m hoping to go to med school!” (In itself an accomplishment to figure out)
“Oh! Which schools are you wanting to go to?”
“Not sure yet, we’ll see what happens!” (What, I’m supposed to know this now too?)
“What specialty do you want to do?”
“Honestly I’ve got no idea, you’re talking to the girl who eats cereal for dinner everyday.” (Did I say that out loud?)
As a type A personality, I need my plans and reasons all the more. I am the only person I know (freshmen included) who uses that paper timetable scheduler you can get from the Academic Skills Center (LINK this thing). I keep my life and my emotions neatly packaged, so even when I open up to people, I do so by presenting them with a neatly wrapped parcel of what I am thinking and feeling, and why. I like to think I am a logical person, living rationally, with emotions that always make sense. (Though my friends know me better than that…)
Regardless of personality, we all want to have things figured out. Uncertainty is vulnerable. There is safety in knowing what you will be doing once you step out of the Dartmouth bubble. There is comfort in knowing who will be around for you as you go through life. There’s a sense of control in rationalizing the world around you, thinking you understand how it works, how you fit in.
Life would be much easier if it always made sense. But it doesn’t. Sometimes things happen that you don’t expect. In fact, when you think about it, most things are unexpected, you’ve just already accepted them as your past. I’m learning right now that I didn’t have all the answers I thought I did. And that’s okay. We are so young, and there is so much time for things to change, for things to fall into place, and for things to slowly make sense in the context of a longer life.
We must learn not to run screaming from uncertainty. (Although if you see me running around screaming, it’s a process, okay?) Sometimes you just don’t know how things will turn out, no matter how much you try to come up with answers or try to predict the future. And if you can take a deep breath, and take it one day, one step at a time, things will fall into place. There has never been a person who had it all figured out at 21. (Unless you’re reading this now, in which case, hit me up.) If there is a day that I have all the answers, it must be well into my “Crocheting and Owning 4+ Cats” years.
However, I suspect that day will never come, and that life is actually a series of un-figuring out what you thought you had all figured out. In which case... I think I’ll have cereal for dinner.
