Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2005

i'm past due for my regular mental breakdown-over-my-future

I was so old when I was a senior in high school. I knew everything. I had a plan.
Now, here I am in the latter half of my junior year of college. Which means, after this, I'll have one more year to figure out the rest of my life.
College has exposed me to so many new things. Post-positivism, neoliberalism. Russian history, music theory. Québecois literature, sign language, southern africa. I've studied abroad on two different continents, I've made many wonderful friends and I've met many amazing people. I've always believed that the purpose of college was to narrow your interests and refine your goals, yet, why is it that the more I learn, the more I am confused? Things I once thought I would pursue suddenly seem uninteresting once I study them, and some of my classes i begrudgingly took as requirements have turned out to be the most enlightening. Learning seems to provide me with more questions than answers in the end. I need a few more years to sort things out.
We're now more than halfway done with our college career, so why is it that when that dreaded question, the one that seemed so simple only four years ago, is asked: "So, what are you gonna do after graduation?" the only reply I can think of is, "uh... be a student the rest of my life?"