When I was in the third grade, I remember writing stories with my dad on our family's desktop computer, thinking to myself that I wanted to be a famous author someday. When I was in the ninth grade, I remember going with my mom and my sister to the dermatologist, and thinking to myself that I wanted to go to college to be a dermatologist someday, too. The summer before my senior year of high school, I remember going to every library in my county to check out books all summer long, and wondering to myself if someone could be a medical professional and still have time to write on the side. By the time freshman year of college rolled around, whatever plans I thought I had made for myself had diminished into little more than a vast array of ever-changing ideas.

I've recently been facing a constant battle within myself, an uphill struggle that I sometimes feel like shouldn't be a struggle at all. That struggle? What I want to do with my future. It's a scary word. It holds so much importance, so much meaning because it's your life, your future. It's my future and I don't know what I want to do with it because jobs and career paths can be intimidating, and I change my mind like I change clothes.

It's also something that I don't think I struggle with alone. I can ask any of my college-aged friends, and for the most part, none of us seem to know exactly what we want to do after we graduate. It can be a definite source of stress and anxiety, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that it might be OK to not exactly know.

I don't know what the future holds, but not know means that I'll test the waters of a variety of career paths. I'll take science classes and job shadow health care professionals, and I'll finally figure out if the medical field is where I want to be. I'll write articles and take English classes, and figure out if literature and writing are important enough to me to pursue as a career path. While I'm at it, I might even take a few classes and join a few clubs simply because I'm interested, and because my future is on the line, and I want to get it right.

No, I don't know where the future is going to take me. The road ahead is often scary, but it's also an adventure, and in the end, isn't that what life should be? Life is an adventure, and sometimes the destination isn't the most important part, sometimes it's about how you get there, the people you meet and the lessons you learn along the way. It's exciting, it's intimidating, but it's life, and it's going to be OK.