Most of us grow up with our lives pictured ahead of us as a series of milestones. Finish second kindergarten; finish elementary school (or equivalent); finish middle school, then high school, get into college and- more importantly- finish college.
Thereon out, the milestones become less and less defined, less clear and subject to your own desires, luck and circumstances. That is, frankly, what scares the living daylight out of most people in the last few months of undergrad. All and any structure you knew of, is gone. You set your own milestones now, and that's something you're just not used to. That's what plunges so many into a semi-existential crisis/quarter-life crisis/ mind-paralysis, whatever you wish to call it. College was the final, concrete, defined milestone. Everything after this, is our own to craft.
Grad school, or no grad school? Job? Living at home or moving? Moving towns, coasts or moving continents? Year off? Dear God, Marriage?
Most of us have no idea. We pretend we do, and keep a calm facade to appease the panicking younglings still writing papers and finishing problem sets, hoping that A in Calc 1 will help them sort their lives out. Many graduates before us did that, and many after us will continue to act like they know what they're doing.
The truth is, life after impending graduation is hazy. The choices are endless and the means to achieve them are not set in stone, which is both good and bad, depending on what your personality needs.
For the over thinker (like myself), questioning this reality would lead to a downward spiral and self-induced paralysis of the mind, where you're just freaking out over how vast the horizon is and how you're not making the most of it. Maybe you're limiting yourself to something small, when you could be doing something more meaningful. Curing cancer, saving humanity and the like, instead of filing data?
"Do I even want to do this?" and "Why am I doing this?" are routine thoughts I experience every Monday of my last semester at college. Or every day of this semester. Or every day of every semester. I question my present and my future, and am afraid of the upcoming uncertainty, but what I've come to realize, is that this uncertainty will be my friend for life, and part of growing up, and moving on, is to embrace it.
The point, essentially, is that it is okay to be afraid, because fear is grounded in wisdom and sense. It means you are aware of the pitfalls, and will do what you can to avoid them. It's not okay to freeze up and panic, and it's not okay to not be honest with yourself regarding the changes in your life. Keep calm, and carry on, make more milestones. Embrace whatever life after college holds. We're almost at the immediate final frontier, almost done with that never-ending thesis, and we will go beyond, and conquer.
