Life Before Noon: A Millennial’s Manual

When I was in fifth grade, I sat at my tiny desk and wrote an essay entitled, “What I Want to Be When I Grow Up,” about my dream of being a professional soccer player. This, of course, is ludicrous to anyone who knows me now – I sometimes take the elevator only one floor up, for goodness’ sake. But it does show how much I’ve changed in the last 11 years.

It’s funny to think back to my goals then and compare them to my ambitions now. I guess now you could say my thoughts of the future are more realistic. In four days I will be graduating from James Madison University with a degree in communication studies and a concentration in public relations. So much for majoring in soccer.

A lot of people act like post-college is the end of creating goals for ourselves. In college I certainly haven’t been asked to write any essays about what I want to be when I grow up. Instead, that inquiry has become, “So what are you going to do with your life?” There’s no creativity involved in answering such a question, only pressure to give the correct answer. We are told that by this point we should know what we want, what it will take to get there and exactly how we will accomplish it. And to an extent I have had four wonderful years to do that. I feel much more secure about my future now than I did coming into college as a shy 17-year-old with no major and no real career goals

However, I refuse to believe that at 21 I’m done creating goals for myself, professional or otherwise. I don’t believe this is the end, rather I prefer to say it’s the beginning. I now have all the skills I need to be successful in life and can confidently go out into the world and “make something of myself.” I’ve sent out the resumes and arranged a few interviews. But I will remember along the way that if I change my mind and come up with an entirely new set of goals, that’s okay too. It’s all part of the process. If somewhere along my life path, maybe at my 10 year reunion, someone asks me if I’ve accomplished everything I set out to accomplish, I just might respond with, “I still don’t know exactly what that is. And I feel pretty good about it.”

-Haley