The days are now starting to bleed into each other. And now, 1 month, 9 days, 8 hours after I walked across that stage at the Philippine International Convention Center to receive my diploma, all I can think is that: GRADUATION IS OVERRATED.
If you asked me two months ago, I would've told you that I wanted nothing more than to leave college behind and finally take control of my life. I was so done with internship. So done with exams. So done with all-nighters and highlighters running low. Oh, to be that young again! If only I knew how absolutely terrifying it is be the captain of my own ship. Write your own destiny, they say. That sounds all well and good... only if you have the courage to do so.
And right now, my courage levels are just about the same as a cotton ball.
Staring down the rest of my life is daunting. This might just be the scariest thing I have done in my entire life. All the choices that we are forced to make right now may decide what we make of our careers. If that isn't scary enough, I don't know what is. I remember writing a blog post almost two years ago about fear. In that post, I asked myself what I was most afraid of and surprisingly, I didn't have a ready answer. If only I could say the same now.
I realized that being thrust into the "real" world, left untethered, floating in a sea of uncertainty... that is my greatest fear. And right now, that fear has become all too real. And it is every bit as scary as I imagined it would be.
Making something out of my life requires overcoming that fear and actually doing something worthwhile and productive. I know that I did not spend the last four years of my life inching towards my diploma for nothing. However, that doesn't make the struggle any less daunting. In fact, it only serves to put added pressure on me to make my diploma something more than a fancy piece of paper.
Another reason why everything feels so scary is that everything is so uncertain. For most of my life, I lived by the solid structure and routines of a student. Wake up, go to school, go home, sleep, lather, rinse, repeat. Simple. Straightforward. Nothing like the mess I make of my hours these days. As a student, I had a clear-cut goal which was to graduate on time. I did and for that I'm eternally grateful. Throughout college, we were often asked where we see ourselves in the future. I've always been confident that I'd become a practicing occupational therapist and then pursue continuing education later on. What I did not anticipate was how futile it was. Get a job? Come on. Even I should have known how vague that was. And now I'm smack dab in planning what to do next and all I have are vague ideas about what I want and where I want to be. I need to get some focus back into my life to see where I'm headed. I've come so far and I'll be damned if I fail now.
Maybe I'll take a hint from one of my professors and go on my own soul-searching trip.
If you asked me two months ago, I would've told you that I wanted nothing more than to leave college behind and finally take control of my life. I was so done with internship. So done with exams. So done with all-nighters and highlighters running low. Oh, to be that young again! If only I knew how absolutely terrifying it is be the captain of my own ship. Write your own destiny, they say. That sounds all well and good... only if you have the courage to do so.
And right now, my courage levels are just about the same as a cotton ball.
Staring down the rest of my life is daunting. This might just be the scariest thing I have done in my entire life. All the choices that we are forced to make right now may decide what we make of our careers. If that isn't scary enough, I don't know what is. I remember writing a blog post almost two years ago about fear. In that post, I asked myself what I was most afraid of and surprisingly, I didn't have a ready answer. If only I could say the same now.
I realized that being thrust into the "real" world, left untethered, floating in a sea of uncertainty... that is my greatest fear. And right now, that fear has become all too real. And it is every bit as scary as I imagined it would be.
Making something out of my life requires overcoming that fear and actually doing something worthwhile and productive. I know that I did not spend the last four years of my life inching towards my diploma for nothing. However, that doesn't make the struggle any less daunting. In fact, it only serves to put added pressure on me to make my diploma something more than a fancy piece of paper.
Another reason why everything feels so scary is that everything is so uncertain. For most of my life, I lived by the solid structure and routines of a student. Wake up, go to school, go home, sleep, lather, rinse, repeat. Simple. Straightforward. Nothing like the mess I make of my hours these days. As a student, I had a clear-cut goal which was to graduate on time. I did and for that I'm eternally grateful. Throughout college, we were often asked where we see ourselves in the future. I've always been confident that I'd become a practicing occupational therapist and then pursue continuing education later on. What I did not anticipate was how futile it was. Get a job? Come on. Even I should have known how vague that was. And now I'm smack dab in planning what to do next and all I have are vague ideas about what I want and where I want to be. I need to get some focus back into my life to see where I'm headed. I've come so far and I'll be damned if I fail now.
Maybe I'll take a hint from one of my professors and go on my own soul-searching trip.