Registering for the Last Time: Part 2 aka “Mini Midlife Crisis”

One thing I forgot to mention in the last post was the most annoying thing about registering. After you go through the annoying process, what if the class you wanted was closed? Now you got to rearrange everything! I hate registering for classes.

However, by registering for the last time, it means that soon I am graduating from college. So what happens next? Get a job, a family, put the kids through college so they can repeat the process? It reminds me of one of my favorite movies: Fight Club.

Tyler Durden: My dad never went to college, so it was real important that I go.
Narrator: Sounds familiar.
Tyler Durden: So I graduate, I call him up long distance, I say “Dad, now what?” He says, “Get a job.”
Narrator: Same here.
Tyler Durden: Now I’m 25, make my yearly call again. I say Dad, “Now what?” He says, “I don’t know, get married.”

What I am trying to say is that this sounds extremely boring to me. Graduate High School with good grades so you can get into a good college. Get good grades in college so you can get a good job. Get a good job so you can raise a family comfortably and you measure your success in life by how well you did this process.

So for the last couple of weeks I have been trying to decide what I want to do with the rest of my life. I don’t recommend doing this because it puts you through tremendous amounts of stress. I called my parents to ask for advice because they are usually awesome with this kind of stuff and their response, “It’s okay, it’ll work out, it always does. If you can’t find a job, then go to grad school.” Not the profound response I was looking for. However it is nice to know that they don’t care if I become a professional student.

Therefore I went to others for advice. My roommate Jason Wagner is graduating in December, so I figured that he already has this stuff figured out., only to find out that he is in worst shape than I am in. He is freaking out because he doesn’t know what to do, all he knows is that he doesn’t want a 9-5 job.

As I was talking to Jason he introduced a nice parallel to me about this situation. He compared what we are going through to people who spent their life in jail. Stay with me here. You have heard those stories (Shawshank Redemption) of those guys who spend most of their life in jail, and when they get out the first thing they want to do is go back in. It is all they know in life and it is what they are good at.

Think about us. We have been going to school since we were four years old. Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle, High School, College. I am 22 years old now which means I have spent over 80 percent of my life in school. So I guess I should just go to grad school right? Get a few letters behind my name, CFA, CPA, PhD, BAMF. Maybe then I can get a really good job.

I think I am at that crossroads that Frost talks about. Which road do I take, the road less traveled? Well thanks to him, everyone is taking that road, so which one is now the less traveled?

So, after a few weeks of contemplating I have gained little ground on the goal of figuring out my life. However, I did come to a few conclusions.

Number 1: My parents taught me that no matter how much you disagree with something you still have to “play the game.” This is really tough for someone that is hardheaded as I am, but I do understand why it is important. If the people who will hire you and pay you that nice salary believe that a college education is pivotal, then get the damn diploma.

Number 2: College teaches you so much more than class material. I moved 1,000 miles away from the comfort of my house and lived with complete strangers. By doing so, I learned how to compromise in living situations and learned about myself through other people. I have found that everyone has something different to bring to the table, and it is up to you to learn from them.

Number 3: Self reflection is dangerous. There is a poem that I came across called “Man in the Glass.” The poem tells you that you can fool rest of the world, but you cannot ever fool the man in the glass. I tried convincing myself that I knew what I wanted to do after graduation and that I am going to be successful, however the “Man in the Glass” reminded me that I have not even applied for a job, got an internship, and have a resume that at best “needs work.”

After taking all of this in consideration I decided that in order to decide what I want to do in life, I had to backtrack from the end. Therefore I decided to attempt and set a few goals for myself. First I thought about what I want to accomplish in my lifetime and what it would take for my life to be successful in my eyes. I thought about stupid cliches “Life is not about the moments you make, but about the moments that take your breath away.” As soon as I thought about that quote, I questioned my manhood.

I decided that for me to be truly successful, I would have to live a life that had meaning. How could I make that goal a realistic goal? I came to the conclusion, that when I looked back on my life, it wouldn’t matter about how much money I made or other materialistic things, but to better someone’s life. I am a man of great ambition, so I don’t want to settle just on one life, but a magnitude.

Time to wrap it up before I lose you. I still have no idea what I want to do after I graduate, but I feel as though I am making babysteps in the right direction.