I’ve always been an organized person, even more so when I went to college. I like to have everything organized where it’s supposed to be and I always had to have a plan. The word, “spontaneous,” was not in my vocabulary. I was always the one to be coordinating everything between different people and I liked to know exactly what I was going to do and when I was going to do it. I thought this was a way to relieve stress and worry less. I was very wrong.

To those of you who are planners, you know what I’m talking about. Planning is a habit that is very hard to break. It makes you anxious when your friends tell you to just “go with the flow.” In our book, there is no such thing. How could we possibly just “go with the flow?” I lived this lifestyle for twenty years of my life. I went through the first two years of college always having to know what we were doing on the weekends, what times we were doing those things, and who was all going to be there. I tried numerous times to relax a little bit and go with the flow like my friends did, but I never really succeeded.

This is a habit that can’t be broken unless you are forced to be spontaneous. When I first left for Europe, I had nothing planned. I didn’t know what we were doing every hour of every day in each city and it made me nervous. I spent the whole seven hour plane ride trying to make a plan. When we got there, my plan was already ruined when we got there and had to wait over an hour to get through passport control. At this point, I was forced to throw my plans out the window which I am very thankful for now.

I was forced to learn how to be spontaneous. I didn’t want to make a plan because there was a good chance that it wouldn’t work out and I would end up stressing out more. Not having a plan on this trip is what made it the best trip of my life. We saw things we didn’t expect to see and we did things that we probably wouldn’t have done if I had a plan. We could decide what we wanted to do based on how we were feeling.

I still think that sometimes it’s important to have a plan. I will always be an organized person who people look to if something needs a plan. It's in my personality to like making plans and seeing the plan in action. Some major events require a plan to function the way you want them to function, but not everything. Don’t stress yourself out with planning every minute, because it more than likely won’t work out and leave you more stressed than you were without a plan. Learn to be spontaneous and learn to go with the flow. You'll see that you're life will be much less stressful.