We spend our entire grade school careers preparing for the future. In kindergarten, they ask you what you want to be. In middle school, they tell you to prepare for high school and all of the fancy honors and AP classes so you can get college credit early. In high school, they pressure you to know what college you want to go to and where, how long you'll be there, and what classes you'll take to get where you want to be for the rest of your life. But you're not even a legal adult yet. It's stressful and annoying and honestly pretty dumb.

But then you get to college, and you start to think it's better than what everyone said. You get the first real taste of independence, you meet new people, join new clubs, and everything feels great. It's not stressful like you thought it would be, it's fun!

For about a month. And then you start to have all of these realizations, like the fact they after a very very short four years, you're supposed to have enough experience and knowledge to start a full career with health and dental benefits, and a 401k (whatever that is). It starts to feel like you're a little kid again, sitting at the grown-up table, but without any clue of what they're talking about. All you want to do is play with your Barbies and dinosaurs and pretend everything's okay again.

But there's something you need to realize.

It's okay to not be okay right now.

Say it once, say it twice, say it a million times. It doesn't matter if you're a senior in high school, a senior in college, or somewhere in between. Everyone deserves to say it and believe themselves when they do.

Everywhere you look, there's people barely older than you who seem to have their lives together. Maybe they have an apartment or a house, an internship and a full time job lined up, or even six graduate schools ready to accept them. You look around and can't help but wonder why you aren't more like them, and where you went wrong. You'll wonder how they got there so effortlessly and so fast. Everyone but you seems to be going in the right direction, and you can't even figure out which way is up or down. It's stressful and it sucks.

The truth is though, no one has their life together when they're 19, 20, or even 25. Even if they do have an apartment and a job, it's probably not where they want to be. Or they think they're not doing good enough for the rest of the world. In fact, they're probably thinking that your life looks pretty put together right now.

But life is a journey and all we're really meant to do is live through it. We're not meant to know every little detail from our futures, and that's okay. You're only young once, so you should enjoy not knowing everything while you can. You'll have plenty of time when you're thirty or forty to worry about your house and career. But right now, you should be enjoying life. And the easiest way to not do that is to think you should be something you're not.

So stop looking at everyone else and thinking that they're doing better than you. Stop wishing you had done something different in order to seem more adult right now. Stop wondering if you should have a mortgage or a picket fence or a kid. Stop thinking that you'll never be as put together as your friends or family. You are where you're supposed to be right now. Whether that's 60k in student debt or living in a shitty apartment with a job that doesn't even come close to your true passion.

You will get to where you're supposed to be some day, and it won't be by thinking you should be something you're not. I promise.