It's my senior year, and I don't think I have gone more than a week without someone asking me what my plans are for after graduation. From professors, family, and friends - it's the one question everyone has on their mind to ask me. To their usual disappointment, I don't have a clear answer. Sometimes to save myself from an explanation, I'll share with someone an idea I've thought about once or twice and leave it at that. But if I'm being completely honest, I can't picture where my life will take me after I finally get to cross the stage at graduation. I'm supposed to have it figured out by now, right? After years of late nights, short deadlines, applications, connections and some soul-searching and still not a single idea of what I want to do post-grad. I may be clueless but don't get me wrong: I have a major that I love and that I'm passionate about. However, I just cannot picture myself selecting one career that will be mine for the entirety of my working years.
Having no expectations may end up making my post-grad transition easier (at least this is what I'm trying to convince myself of). The idea of not knowing what I want to do means that I'm open to anything that life may throw in my direction. This time next year I could be the youngest person in an office doing tasks nobody else wants to do because I need to work my way up somewhere. There may be a chance that I'm still a student being challenged more than ever before working on my graduate degree. Of course, there's also the possibility that I end up among the post-grad stereotype and end up under-employed working two part-time jobs in something completely unrelated to my degree. Truthfully, none of these options sound bad to me. We're young, we're ambitious and we're excited to share what we've learned with the world no matter where we take that first step.
If you're someone with a precise five year plan and you know all the steps you need to get there, kudos to you! You have a plan, and that's awesome. There are definitely days where I wish I was in your shoes. But for the most part, not knowing doesn't feel like the short end of the stick. I may need to have a dozen jobs until I find one that is the right fit, but the idea of being open to any experience is why I'm okay with the possibility of the unknown. Not having an idea of what I want to do doesn't mean these college years were not as productive as they should've been- it just means I have some more searching to do.
