Mollie Shiflett ’26 is a double major in history and linguistics, not that she knows what to do with that. She is captain of Women’s Club Soccer Gold for the College of William and Mary and is an avid fan of most sports — except golf. Email Mollie at mrshiflett@wm.edu.
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.
I don’t necessarily know if everybody has this idea or not, and given that I don’t know, the answer is probably that absolutely no one has had this thought and I’m making s— up, as usual, but I sort of thought that I’d be going into senior year with a plan. And if I didn’t have a firm plan, then I would at least have the beginnings of a plan.
I’ve spent a lot of this past summer trying to figure out what that plan was. The curse of being surrounded by type-A friends is that almost all of them have had a plan since our freshman year. They came in knowing they were going to graduate from the Raymond A. Mason School of Business, or knowing they were going to be a doctor or a physician’s assistant. I never really had a plan — just an assumption that I would eventually have one, like it was gonna fall into my lap or something.
Safe to say that never happened. So I’ve been sitting for three months trying to figure out what the f— I’m supposed to do with my life. And I have the basis of a plan, but I always thought I’d feel more confident in it than I do.
Cue quarter-life crisis. Or almost a quarter-life crisis, I’m not quite that old yet. So I guess then the question is: What’s the point of this article? It’s not gonna be a pity party or anything … well, not any more than it already has been. I kind of just wanted to reflect on all the misconceptions of things I thought I’d have in my senior year. Some of these are going to be painfully obvious, almost to the point of cliche, but things are cliche for a reason, right?
And I guess the biggest cliche is what I’ve been dancing around. I think that everyone assumes that eventually they’re going to know what they’re doing, or at least have confidence in going in a general area. My sister is graduating with me this year (twins), and she’s definitely taken the “must have a plan” thing to heart. The amount that she’s researched grad schools and obsessed about making the absolutely correct decision has given me more second-hand anxiety than I thought was possible, and I guess that’s led me to making a different kind of decision.
I’m not saying that I went all hippie and decided that I didn’t need a plan, but I guess I’ve figured out that an outline is better than having every step planned out. It gives you the freedom to screw up, pivot and change plans. It lets me enjoy more of my senior year instead of panicking. I mean, I definitely will panic. I’m panicking as I write this, but I think the biggest thing I’ve learned in the past three years is that giving yourself the space to say, “That didn’t work, let me try something else,” is one of the most powerful things that you can do when you’re trying to figure things out.
I also thought that by the time I got to my senior year, I’d feel ready. Not ready for senior year to start, but ready to get through it and move on. But I’m not. And maybe that’s partially because I don’t have a plan, but I think another part of it is just a part of getting older. Like how there comes a point where you sort of stop looking forward to your birthday — not presents, never presents, but just that the idea of getting another year older doesn’t have the same appeal that it did when you were six.
I think I’ve figured that out too, but it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. The older you get, the more things become about what you’re losing or leaving behind. You’ll have plenty of exciting experiences and opportunities in front of you, but nothing will ever be the same again. That was also true when you left high school for college, but at least on my part, I was still thinking that, even though I wouldn’t see the same people all the time, a lot of my time at home would be the same. Now I know that’s not how it works.
I am looking forward to this year, seeing all my friends again and doing all the senior year things. Mug nights, wine and cheese, senior week, one last blowout. But that’s the other thing. It will be the last.
So I’m here. No plan. Not ready. And that’s fine.
