Guest column

Photo Credit: Genessa Gutzait · *The Sentry*

The time is finally coming; I am running out of tomorrows to procrastinate on. My application for graduation has been accepted and I have just over two and a half months left until I put on the black gown (assuming I pass my meager four credit hours).

It’s decision-making time for this 22-year-old and things get a lot more open-ended past this point. There’s this feeling that I can freely choose what happens next, more so than when I graduated high school. Sure, there are limits to my options, but there is no longer a script I need to follow.

Growing up, the youths are told to graduate from high school, graduate from college, get a job, get married, have unnecessary children, pay bills, retire, die. I mean, that was never the direct way it was phrased, but it’s how my brain interpreted it. And it was nice to hold onto because it gave life some certainty, like the framework was there to personalize.

Four and a half years of meeting various people from different walks of life and living my own life has led to that framework of what should happen with my time on this planet being decisively dismantled. It’s terrifying and exciting all at once because despite having my plan of what my next steps are, I can decide to just say “To hell with that” and go be a sheep herder or a waiter in Boston or start all over again, get a new degree, and work on some oil rig.

And I am a person who is paralyzed when made aware there are multiple options available for a single choice. The reality of it all is that I will be joining the Air Force, and I’ll keep working toward my dream of being a physician, but I will always be a day dreamer at heart who will look back on these months and always play with the idea of “what if?”

Guest columns are written by The Sentry staff writers to give them the experience of writing an editorial and the platform to share their stories.