So, I’m officially a junior in college. The next time I move into a dorm, I will be beginning my third year of college at TCNJ. In the past two years, I have taken some fantastic classes, pulled some regrettable all-nighters, and attended two schools. It’s been quite the journey, with rejection and failure mixed in, but I have prevailed, and I have been proud of myself. I made great friends, laughed, cried, and experienced new things.
Most importantly, I have completed half of my undergraduate years, and I am astonished…I have absolutely no idea where the time has gone!
I distinctly remember my first day of sixth-grade and the new shoes I wore with my uniform. My eighth-grade graduation is clear in my mind, and so are my first and last days of high school. I remember the day I became a junior in high school, and it’s hard for me to believe that was four years ago already.
When I was little, I thought twenty-year-olds had it made. They could drive, they didn’t have a bed time, and they had their life figured out. By now, I thought I would be on my way to engagement, I would know where I wanted to work and what exactly I wanted to do, and how to be the “adult” I thought I would be when I was younger. But, alas, that is not the case.
I am only learning to drive, I have not decided what I want to do yet and I have never had a steady relationship. I don’t know how to do my taxes, I call my parents for some of the simple things, and I love when I can be in bed by 9pm.
I truly don’t know where the time has gone, or what I have to show for it, or how I got to this point. But even through all of this uncertainty, there are things I know now after being halfway done with college, and a few things I want to get out of my last two years as an undergrad, like any student. I am excited to take more classes, study abroad, and experience life at twenty-one years old (everyone says that life gets better at that age).
Who knows what the future holds? Ten-year-old me would have said she did back in 2007. I would have told you that at twenty I would be a Rockette (thanks, height requirement) or at Juilliard or on Broadway. I would have had a boyfriend and an apartment and I would have been the most independent woman in New York City. But, plans change. The good thing is, ten-year-olds are more dreamer than realist and without them we would never have imagination or ambition.
Sometimes the future is scary, sometimes it’s exciting, and that’s normal for anyone at twenty and, from observing the adults in my life, I don’t think it’s a feeling that ever really goes away. I did not become a Rockette or go to college for dance. I don’t live on my own, I am not nearly engaged and I don’t have a driver’s license yet. I am a clumsy, 5 foot 5 woman who’s in the first year of her 20s and I have no clue what the world is doing sometimes. I am halfway through college, I have made it far in my opinion, and I understand now that the world works in mysterious ways and everyone is on their path. I have changed more as a person in these last two years than I thought I would.
And besides, who knows what will happen next.