I’m sure that, for at least some of you reading this, this is your first semester of college, your first time being away from home, your first true, and I mean really true, taste of independence.

Your choices, hard work, and dedication (and likely a healthy dose of tears and anxiety) have brought you to our fine establishment of higher learning and to the realm of unprecedented personal freedom.

College is, in not so many words, terrifying; you simply have so many paths ahead of you that you find you can’t move a single inch in any direction some days.

For some of you, you have known what you wanted to do “when you grew up” your entire life and are now currently in the exact place you want to be to pursue it.

If that is the case for you, I offer you my sincere congratulations and well-wishes.

To the rest of you, if you’re like me and still trying to figure out who you are or who you’re meant to be, I offer you this instead: You will be okay, even if you have to figure things out a day at a time.

This may seem like some sort of cheap, cliched platitude but I mean it wholeheartedly. We are made to think, from a very early age, about what we want to “be” when we grow up.

Often we find that our loved ones have certain ideas for our futures (my mom wanted me to be a lawyer, though I think she was just poking fun at my love of arguing). I’m sure that you’ve known people in high school who had a big plan for their lives and set out doing exactly what they wanted.

I thought that I was one of those people, but circumstances deemed that untrue. I started off in a completely different major until I finally quit.

I eventually made the decision to pursue English with no real goal in mind. Since that day, I’ve never looked back. I completed my undergrad and am now going for my Master’s.

I cannot promise you will make a by-chance right decision like I did, but I can promise that, whatever it is you want to do, you will find your destiny.

You don’t have to have some grand plan or pursue that really profitable degree just because your loved ones keep nagging you to do so. You can
instead make the conscious decision every day to find out a little bit more about yourself.

Don’t worry if it takes a semester or two; your most important job is to save yourself. It’s easy to lose your identity in a sea of possibilities.

Do your best to keep your head above water, even if there’s nothing on the horizon just yet and remember that nothing is going to save us forever, but a lot of things can save us today.

Will Padgett is a first year English graudate student. He can be reached at [email protected] or 217-581-2412.