Song that I am loving right now: “Just My Imagination.” – The Temptations
Quote of the day: "the things we are afraid of are usually the most worthwhile"
Hi, end of college career. While I fully welcome you and have been expecting you, I didn’t expect you to arrive with such a huge wave uncertainty. Suddenly, when life requires me to make important decisions, my mind is trapped in a dust bowl, where I am being suffocated and begging for a fresh drip of change. My commonly know care-free, jump in the front seat and take life by the handle bars mentality is stuck between the tracks of time. The genres that run through my mind now consist of a more somber theme song. There are too many choices that need to be made and quick. Grad school/no grad school…school applications/job applications….personal statements/a collection of shell silverstein poems. Who knew that the real world would be so hard? The best advice I have received? Do what makes you happy. If only it was that simple. What if you are not exactly sure what will make you the happiest you can be? What then? Does your life just rest on an all too familiar turntable where the only thing you look forward to is chick-fil-a reopening on Monday morning? I refuse to settle for a life where the same task is repeated daily and the only difference is the beginning half of the day’s name. I have always dreamed of a life filled with excitement, challenge, and reward. Never have I once thought that my life would file into the ordinary box. But, now, as I look at my options, I see more cardigans and pencil skirts in my future. Which both mean that life is bland and cold. Except, of course, if the cardigan is from Jcrew or Anthropologie, that could really be the only exception. Then, my life may have a little bit of flare and flavor. This semester I have received a “glimpse,” as Nicholas Cage would like to call it, of what my future may entail. And while I love the girls of Wisteria Lane, and enjoy their flavorful gossip and drama each night, I know that my life can rise to so much more. As I watched Brooke Poley Ruff get married the other weekend, I tried to imagine where my life would be when I hit this point in my timeline. The truth is, I could see nothing. I had no idea of what I would be doing. I could not picture myself anywhere doing anything. This frightens me. 4 years ago I could have told you that I would be in front of a classroom teaching five year olds their ABC’s and dancing to the wiggle song with a huge smile on my face. I was so confident in my dream to become a kindergarten teacher. Now, this dream has been tarnished and punctured by bad experiences and work overload. It has left me stronger in personality but left my mind wounded. In a few months I am going to be walking across a stage in a black, shiny, polyester, cap and gown with a diploma in hand. What does this mean to me? It means that I have spent 4 (and a half, oops) years of my life searching for who I am and what it means to be Kelley Oliver. The pages I have read and the papers I have written show no evidence of what I have learned in college. These are memorizations and snazzy word combinations that were scrambled together to make an “A” and allowed me to apathetically trudge on to the next “adventure.” What really shows evidence of my college career are the memories I have carried with me are the life lessons I have been so blessed to learn. What will I be walking towards? A life of uncertainty. A life where the windshield is foggy and cracked. I know I will make it, I AM certain that life will bring me joy. I just hope my choices and decisions will lead me to the best life I can have. I am a dreamer and I am not going to quit dreaming.
