“What are you doing after you graduate? Where are you planning on going to college?” Those same questions arise in too many conversations, echoing in my head. I’ve gotten used to just telling people my long-term plans include donating organs and bodily fluids for money and living on whatever available couch I can find. Or maybe I’ll live in some cabin in Canada, grow a beard, drink rain water and become a subsistence farmer.
I’m faced with a mass of contradicting feelings concerning the years ahead of me.
I am legitimately terrified of adulthood. Or at least the idea that I will fail as an adult– becoming that guy in the van down by the river. My eighteenth birthday is advancing which seems completely surreal. The fact that in a matter of weeks I will become a senior feels like receiving a delayed present– only now that I’m beginning to open the shiny paper with the realization that, on the inside, are stacks of unfinished calculus homework and lots of mediocre essays.
You’d think that my upcoming senior year would be a relief considering I’ve counted down the days until graduation since around fourth grade. While I’m ready to become a senior, to move out of Mansfield and, in turn, move on with my life, I’m also fearful of what comes next, and if I’ll survive on my own.
In these past 12 years, I worked hard to achieve an above-average, ambitious A-B student reputation, ready to fill out college applications in elementary school. And then junior year came- a slippery slope into piled procrastination, the occasional C becoming more and more prevalent on Skyward and the fear of the things behind the corner in my life has hit hard in my severe case of pre-senior senioritis.
It sometimes seems as though I’m going through some terrible quarter-life crisis, plagued with the fear I haven’t done enough community service, haven’t made grades worthy of the top ten percent, won’t get into a good college and will have some morbidly depressing job in fast food until my life comes to a sad, pathetic end.
Or maybe I’m too melodramatic.
One thing’s definite: I’m ready to get out. Whether this means getting a degree in journalism or mimicking Chris McCandless from Into the Wild, making friends with squirrels and living off the fat of the land. I’ve got my whole life in front of me. I mean, it’s just senior year.
