This week marks four months left until I have no idea what comes next. That should be terrifying, but instead I find it exhilarating… mixed with being absolutely terrifying. I usually have a plan, an expectation, an image of what something will look like in my head, and recently I lost all of that speculation and became a complete blank slate for 2017.

For three-and-a-half years, I have worked for a bachelor’s degree, declaring a major I honestly didn’t even know existed until two years ago. For four years, I have gone to a college that was as far from my first choice as you could imagine, and it ended up being the place I needed to be to find what I was meant to do at this point in my life.

In the next four months, I will finish my last 18 units of my bachelor’s degree and pray there is enough coffee and great music to get me through it. I will fly to the East Coast for the sixth time in three years just because I want to and hopefully catch a train ride to New York City. There, once again, I will dream about the apartment I plan to have for two-ish years—no longer than three so I don’t get caught up in the rat race— while working as a journalist. Then I’ll come home to my cat who will hang out with me while I sit and drink tea on my window seat that overlooks Central Park as I watch it snow in the winter. (Yeah right. Probably a basketball court with my paycheck.)

In the next four months, I’ll do my best to go to the events my university puts on even though I loathe them. I’ll enjoy Sushi Tuesdays and the convenience of Chick-fil-A being across the courtyard from the newsroom. I won’t worry when I have to sleep on the couch in the newsroom because in four months I won’t be in that room anymore being lulled to sleep by the clicking of keyboards, someone's Spotify playlist playing on low-volume in the background and my computer screen light urging me to keep writing.

I know what the next four months look like for the most part because I’ve done most of it on repeat for three-and-a-half years— heck, more like 16-years of repeat. All of it will suddenly come to the end. I can see all the way up until I walk across that stage and receive the most expensive piece of paper I’ve ever bought. Ever since I can remember this was the end goal— graduate from college and go out and live your life. But what does living your life look like? When this chapter of my life closes, what then?

And I think that’s the exciting part. Why not everything?