I am a nineteen-year-old college girl.
My days are full of courses that cause my eyes to dose off without effort, nights in the library flipping through definitions, and way too many scantrons.
"Is this what we're supposed to be doing?" I ask myself as I know the answer like the back of my hand.
The answer is NO.
Will I probably still do it even though it's not what life is about, of course. Do I hate myself for that? Yes.
As I go to sleep I scroll on the popular page of Youtube. I see teens who have given up the normal lifestyle pattern of college, job, and marriage and I get infatuated with how they can do this. How do they have the guts and the drive to know they'll make it without a degree? Is it molded in our heads that they are crazy for living and getting to see the world or are they actually the smartest people to ever exist?
There are world travel pages that flood our timelines. We scroll past and don't figure that we could have the same opportunity if only we just took the chance.
To quit school, work for a year, and then live your dream sounds bizarre. This idea isn't normal, it's spontaneous and beautiful. It is taking everything you have learned your whole life and saying "I am done with this routine" and making your own. Picking a place on the map, filling up your tank, and never looking back.
My dream? Grab my best friends and everything I can throw into one suitcase and hit the road in a van we all split. Waking up in a new place every day. New places, new memories, and new dreams that are being tackled every day.
When I'm in my lowest of lows I wonder why I haven't just done it yet. It's when I have the sleepless nights full of schoolwork and stress. I come to this realization that we only have this one life (that we know of) so why spend it in lecture halls and libraries. There are mountains to climb, oceans to swim, and concerts to lose your voice at.
The one thing I have learned is that life is unpredictable. I don't want to waste my life away by decoding impossible math problems and cracking Shakespeare's meaning of love.
So if you ever see that I'm halfway across the world, just know I finally listened to my gut and trust me... I AM DOING WELL.
