My nightmares used to consist of fleeing from monsters, falling off of high places, and even being chased by a mutant Pop-Tart that had a taste for human flesh. I wish my nightmares were still so simple. Now they have become intensely real. They are now filled with the worry of getting a job and starting a career after college. The most terrifying part about this dream is that I can’t wake up and disprove it’s application to reality. When I wake up this dream is still quite real. There’s a sea of college students and I am just a fish, and I don’t even know what kind of fish. It’s the principle of invested pressure: I have put fifteen years into the preparation of my career; that’s three-fourths of my life so far and I am not even done yet. It’s a fear of the unknown: the looming possibility of a dismal future.

I have a major, yet statistics show that most people don’t even end up in a career that applies to their major. That fact alone puts a thicker fog on the light at the end of the tunnel (if there is even a light). “Just do what you love!” they say: sadly I can’t find a career where hanging out with my friends and sleeping makes enough money to support my desired lifestyle. A good job usually takes maturity: my maturity chart has flat lined since around age 13. The only aspect of my life I can really take seriously is how I don’t take my life very seriously—it’s a disturbing paradox.

I know that the real influence in my future is myself, and yet I continue to blow off school so obviously I cannot be trusted with such a responsibility. My main hope right now is that a movie-type scenario comes into play and some rich big-wig sees a little bit of himself in me and hires me into a highly lucrative position doing cool stuff with no real qualifications. Until then I suppose I’ll keep getting scratch-offs at every gas station.