New beginnings — and an ending

In my part of the world, the clock has not yet struck midnight and 2017 has not yet made its debut. As I wait for the new year to make its arrival, I cannot help but feel both excited and sad, hopeful and terrified for 2017. For me, 2017 isn't just another year; it's the year in which I will complete what could very possibly be my last year of formal education. In the coming year, I will walk across a stage in a cap and gown, receive my college diploma and complete my schooling career.

While that is certainly exciting, it is also scary. For my entire life, school has been a constant: September came, school started. May or June came, school ended. Then summer vacation graced me with its beautiful presence, and as quickly as it came, it would leave to usher in a new school year. 

School is predictable, but life beyond my graduation date is uncertain. It's "the real world." It's not picking classes and signing up for extracurricular activities. It's not meeting your friends at the dining hall and deciding when to head to the mall on a Friday night. The real world is applying for jobs and keeping your fingers crossed that all of your hard work in college pays off. The real world is watching your friends disperse across the country, some finding jobs more quickly than others and trying to remember that everyone moves at their own speed. The real world is big and scary and unknown, especially when all you've ever known is the microcosm of a school.

What is exciting, however, is that the future that I've so long dreamed about — the one that always felt so far in the distance — is finally here, and it may present the very opportunities that I've wished for. I remember looking at myself in the mirror at 5 years old and wondering who I would be when I was 21; I also remember thinking that 21 seemed so old! But I can still see myself seriously mulling over who I would be by then, what I would look like, what I would accomplish and where I would be going. I hoped that at 21, I would have it all together.

Although I can't say I have it all together (far from it, actually), I can say that what I have learned since then — lessons learned in the classroom and lessons learned in life — will certainly help carry me through my next phase of life: adulthood. I certainly don't know everything, but I am used to being in the student's chair and I've excelled in the classroom, so learning even more as I move along will be a challenge I know I'm equipped to face. 

Beyond what I already know and what I'm willing to learn, I also have something that may be just as important: hope. I am hopeful that 2017 will be a year in which I finally start to live a big life, a year in which I take chances, a year in which I take leaps — no more baby steps — toward achieving my dreams. I believe that 2017 will be the year that starts to let me have it all together, with each year after that only getting better and better.

But most of all, I have hope that I won't let that little 5-year-old girl down; she's depending on me, and I owe it to her to give her the best future — the best life — she never could have dreamed of.

Happy New Year, friends. Wishing you all the love, hope and joy in the world in 2017 and every year after.

XO,

That Hopeful University Girl