Senior year is a weird time, because sometimes, I feel like I regret my good decisions just as much as my bad ones. My name is India, and I’m a senior double majoring in Government and Economics while fulfilling pre-med requirements at the College of William & Mary because I love having no social life and I can barely decide what type of cereal I want for dinner, let alone what I wanted to major in. Unfortunately, it’s my last semester at William & Mary, and there are a lot of decisions to be made.
I’ve always been a bit of a perfectionist, and this year, I’m challenging myself to finally let go of that a little bit. Like maybe it’s okay to get an 85% on a physics WebAssign if it means going to the first mug night of the semester with your best friends, right? Right!!! And maybe I’ve actually matured a lot over these last four years and I don’t need external validation to the same degree. That was a rhetorical example, and you definitely don’t have to reassure me in the comments that I made the right choice. (But you can if you want.) In all seriousness though, senior year is full of so many tiny little decisions and moments, yet, people tend to focus on the big, looming ones.
And I get it. It’s kind of terrifying not knowing where you’ll be in a year or what you’ll be doing or even if any of the people you currently hang out with on a daily basis will live within driving distance. I’m scared too. But also, it’s kind of exhilarating! I don’t know what I’m doing next year, but I’m excited to figure it out. I could be a doctor or a television writer or a vegan celebrity chef or a dog’s sidekick in a movie about a dog and its girl, à la Ashley Tisdale in that one terrible High School Musical spinoff. There’s a whole world of possibilities out there, and the best part is, I don’t need to make up my mind right now.
I really am truly terrible at making decisions. I’ve had to make a lot of decisions this past year: Should I get coffee from Swemromas or The Grind? How many shots of expresso should I put in my mocha? Sugar or cream? Or sugar and cream?? What I’m trying to say, is that my coffee break twenty minutes ago was really difficult for me.
I think the other point I wanted to make in this short intro post though, was that being a senior doesn’t mean you need to figure everything out or settle down or make any sort of major life decision. We’re twenty-two. We’re so young. We can literally change our minds any time we want. I could get a post-bac or take improv classes or move to Hawaii. Anything could happen.
It’s just so easy, I think, as a senior, to get trapped in one particular mindset: I need to find a job, then I need to find an apartment, then I need to figure out my life. And it can definitely seem particularly important when all your friends suddenly know exactly what they’re doing: Sarah is going to law school, Dana is studying for her MCATs, and everyone else has been hired by a consulting company. However, according to a Forbes Entrepreneurs article, 70% of millennials leave their first job within two years of joining. That’s a lot.
Contrary to what it might seem like after talking to all your business school buddies, what you do next year doesn’t need to define the rest of your life. I think it’s better to just live in the moment and let the rest of your life define you. So follow along with me as I blog about my senior year and all the little, tiny moments and decisions that make it special. Besides, it’s hard enough to order coffee, why try to decide the future when you don’t have to?
Maybe she should have thought about this before incurring massive student loans or spending her family’s money? Sometimes a Gap year is just the thing.