From an Incoming College Senior Who’s Not Ready to Graduate
After almost two decades of schooling, I’m finally one year away from completing college. I’m finally close to getting rest from all the tiring demands of our education system. More importantly, I’m a few steps closer to achieving that childhood dream I’ve always dreamed of since grade five. After years of hard work, enough blood, tons of sweat, and buckets of tears, I’m finally here! But where am I exactly? To be honest, it seems like I do not know anymore.
College is where I should’ve gotten things figured out, or so I thought
Just when I’m supposed to have things figured out, I started feeling lost. Apparently, the fire inside of me suddenly dwindled. My passion for everything I used to love gradually started to fade. For a few years already, I have barely touched the books I have always loved. I have suffered from a self-diagnosed Severe Reading Slump, and from what I can see, my lost passion for reading catalyzed a slew of events that lead me to this uncomfy feeling of being lost. It dominoed leading me to where I am now.
How does your passion somewhat die?
I used to be extremely passionate about writing and reading, and for a while, I became good at the art of storytelling. Hence came my dream to become a storyteller of any kind in the future. That’s why I took Broadcasting in college. I used to want to write and tell stories to the public so badly. Well, I still do have that passion up to this day, but it feels like I no longer seem to know the right words to say.
My skills became rusty, and from my long reading slump came my struggle with writer’s block. To be honest, I have not run out of stories to tell, but I did run out of words to express my thoughts. With my difficulty in putting my thoughts from pen to paper, the passion in me somehow died down. It is scary, to say the least. Now that I’ve lost the only thing I always knew how to do, where am I to go?
Where do I go from college?
As spoken in the lines from Marvel’s Shang-Chi movie, “If you aim at nothing, you hit nothing.” And that really hits home for me. Now that I’ve somehow lost my fervent passion, the goal has become unclear and, in turn, my direction became aimless.
I’ve always thought to myself that I can never imagine myself anywhere else but here. But now that I’m here and I still feel like I’m lost, I am sometimes made to ask, where should I really be? Where am I supposed to serve my purpose? Apparently, only time can really tell, and as for now, while everything’s still unsure, I have to keep soldiering on.
What’s in store for me?
The future is uncertain, and honestly, uncertainty scares me. This is probably the reason why I’m not yet ready to graduate. It’s because I’m not ready to leave the comforts of a school where I’ve spent almost all my life. I’ve always been a student since I was 3, and it’s the only thing I’ve always known to do. Therefore, not knowing what’s next brings a lot of anxiety to me. Questions like, “what if sa school lang ako magaling, pero sa totoong buhay hindi pala” begin to surface.
In school, you always know what’s next. After grade 1 means being Grade 2, and after Grade 2 means being Grade 3, and so on. But now I’m turning 4th year in the next semester, and will hopefully graduate after the sem that follows, what comes next? As I said, it remains unknown.
Closing Words
The thought of transitioning into another phase in your life is indeed overwhelming. Seeds of doubt start seeping in, and lots of questions start surfacing. “Am I good enough?” “Can I deliver to the demands of my chosen field?” “Am I worthy of this profession?” But at the end of the day, the experience of being lost is only a part of your journey to self-discovery. It allows you to reevaluate your directions in life, and it allows you to grow in exploration.
So, in the end, though I myself continue to struggle, I would like to say, everything’s going to be okay soon. We just have to trust the process. And, as for college? There’s always something ahead of us, even after college.
