I would apologize to all of my readers for the dramatic title but honestly, I can’t. I am a senior now at TCNJ and everything I have ever known – school during the year, holidays off, long summers on the beach, running amuck as I please so long as I get solid grades, etc. etc. – is about to vanish at the close of this school year. And that feeling is something indescribably unnerving.

On Sunday night, I drove home from my family’s annual vacation on Long Beach Island back home to North Jersey, so that I could make it to work on time Monday morning. Of course, the drive wasn’t pleasant and, without question, I did not want to go. You can bet your ass I cried and you can then bet some more that I continued to cry spontaneously throughout the drive. Leaving my family was so hard, but knowing that I was headed back to a three hour commute and nine hour work day was harder. Lately, all I can think is "Why am I working? Why do I pay to park here? Who REALLY owns this land? Why can’t I eat the crops that this Earth produces naturally and expectedly for free? Why is the sky blue?" (OK, last one is kind of a joke. I’m a lady who believes by tangible scientific evidence so I’m fully aware of this answer).

BUT ANYWAY. Really, I can’t shake the wondering why I needed to go to college and get a degree and move to a city and land a solid job and slave away to make money, only to live in a shitty apartment and then hope to love and have my future partner help me/us to become financially stable. My life is mapped out for me and none of it was my choosing. But I CAN NOT AND WILL NOT LIVE THIS WAY. I vow it and I intend it to be true. I believe in a purposeful living and I believe in self-fulfillment. I believe in bettering oneself and I believe in bettering the world. And corporate America doesn’t need me. The world needs me. I need me.

But, here I am driving down the parkway on my way back to my internship – which by the way, I truly do enjoy – in no city other than the greatest in the world, New York. Is there another option right now?," I think. "I need to get my foot in this door and figure out if I can find my way here. Am I sell out?" Life is all things sweet, hard, painful, immense, pleasurable and all encompassing. There is no right or wrong way and I think that is what my biggest struggle is in stepping into the light of adulthood. My life has always been mapped out for me. I have always been a student (Pre-K, Grade School, High School, College), and I have always excelled at it (extracurricular activities, sports, councils, peer educators). But now, although the general trajectory is written out for me- note the extensive list of lifetime events listed above, no one will tell me how to live it. And I want to live it right and by my own standards, not by those of the people who have come before me and set the norm to be as such. Driving down the parkway, reality, acceptance, a pace for change and authentic living all settle in, disrupting my daydreams of my siblings’ laughter, summer camp and too much sunscreen, my parents holding hands in the front seat of the car, deep blue seas inviting me to swim, food so delicious it could only have been made with the love and touch of your family, and all things that made my childhood the sweetest delicacy. I am still crying. Working is not the end of my happiness, but it is the end of an era which houses everything I’ve ever known about myself and the world. However, without hesitation, it is coming. I will graduate.

Now, with one year left of my career as a student, I am vowing one more vow to take in every last bit of my own personal freedom and to laugh so hard that it hurts, to swap stories and tears with the people who matter, to run and race and sob and scream and (probably- ok definitely- be hungover) and play and continue in an overly-passion-about-everything-I-touch-because-what-else-is-living-if-you’re-not-REALLY-living induced state of life. Because life doesn’t wait for anyone, and the world doesn’t change overnight. If we all chased sunsets over horizons we would crumble as a society. And if everyone gave up their dreams to work nine to five, we would lose our imaginations and spontaneity. There is no euphoric land where we can all gaze at the stars and lose ourselves amongst the beauty of the Big Dipper or Orion all day and night (a gal can dream can’t she?).

So, it’s up to the people who inhabit this Earth and lead their lives on its beautiful lands (hey, that’s you too, buddy!) to find the balance and the lifestyle that works for them to create their own personal happiness. For me, passion is what inspires me more than anything in this world; I will live my last year of childhood, and every year of adulthood to come, with passion leading the way, walking me from college to career or one partner to the next or to whatever I crave in this life. Because it’s mine, yours and every other one of the 7.125 billion people on this planet’s for the taking.