Graduating College

The countdown to graduation started only recently.  Despite being in my final semester of undergrad, I've managed to avoid contracting the senioritis that plagued me and all of my fellow students in high school.  Most of my fellow seniors do not share this sentiment, claiming that senioritis set early in the fall semester, or even junior year.  It's not that I'm not  looking forward to graduation, completing my eighteenth consecutive year of school (I'm including one year of pre-school, because I am sure that at the time, making macaroni necklaces was as serious as the French phonetics test I have on Thursday.)  The truth is, I am trying not to think of it at all.  The truth is, I am scared shitless.

Graduating high school was an exciting adventure.  The days and weeks before it felt like the slow ascent to the top of the first hill of a roller coaster.  *Click click click click*  Days went by, my graduation date moved closer and closer.  Soon I would be at the top. I would graduate and have one final summer at home, then whooosh, down the first hill screaming and laughing.  Finally on my own and free, attending university in my state's capitol.  I graduated high school with a definite track.  I knew there would be cork screws, loops, and unexpected turns, but I could see the whole track.  I knew exactly what I would be doing for the next four years of my life.

If graduating high school and moving onto college is a roller coaster, graduating college and moving onto real life is free falling from an airplane.  I don't see a definite path; I can't even anticipate potential twists and turns.  The whole world is open to me, but I did not get a degree in air aerobics; I haven't the slightest idea how to navigate.

I know there a great deal of college grads, and soon-to-be college grads, who are on a new roller coaster.  Pre-med and pre-law students moving onto the next round of education.  Students with concrete degrees and passionately planned life maps.  I am not among this lucky population.  I am a student of the Liberal Arts.

I tell myself the lie that everything is going to be just fine, and I have high hopes that they will.  I know that I am a hard worker and a real go-getter when I find the right goals, but right now I'm just a newb skydiver, sitting in the airplane with my jumper whipping too loudly in the wind, anxiously awaiting the moment I'm going to be forced to jump, and wondering if it is too late to change my mind and ride back down to safety with pilot.