I graduate in a month and I don’t know what I’m doing. For the past four years I’ve flip-flopped what my goals are, where I want to be, how I want to do it; I have so many interests and talents, I didn’t want to limit myself to just one. For a while I thought I wanted to be a Spanish teacher, but now I feel like I was just taking the safe route. Besides, I will have degrees in English and Spanish come May, but no teaching certificate. So I will have to go back to school for a while to get certified and, right now, I can’t even begin to fathom doing more school. All I want to do is start my life and start making money (and do I need money).

Okay, it’s obviously more complicated than that. You see, my mom is a major influence in my life. I am the oldest child and one that has always succeeded in school and other activities. But I am also a child who does not have it all figured out, like Mom wants me to have. Mom is a nurse. She’s been a nurse since she was 18, she always wanted to be a nurse and nursing is something she’s great at. I, on the other hand, have always wanted to be a writer. And a teacher. And an intellectual property lawyer. And don’t forget an Oscar winning actress. Her thoughts are “pick one,” and preferably the teacher—the safest, most stable of the series and a job she knows and can predict what my life will be like. So for a while I said, okay, let’s be a teacher. But more and more I found myself not being excited about the possibility of being settled so soon. I will be 22 in the summer and to go to school for another year and then move home to the suburbs to teach for thirty years, well, just seems boring. For me. For some people, it’s a dream. But like I said, there are all of those other positions that I want to explore before I take the safe route. You always lose 100% of the shots you don’t take, right?

So here’s my eureka moment: I want to be completely excited and in love with what I’m doing every day, or else what’s the point of life. Naïve? Probably. Idealistic? Yeah. Optimistic and motivating? Definitely. What do I do now? I figure out what makes me happy and what will continue to make me happy. And I figure out a way to make that happen. If it doesn’t work, I can make Mom happy and be a Spanish teacher. But I won’t say I didn’t try first. And so the job search begins.