Graduation is right around the corner for me. What then? Marriage? Not bloody likely. Kids? Not unless the condom breaks. A career will cut into my drinking time. The student reality is crumbling. The college days are numbered. My parents are going to want to see a return on their investment in my education. Everyone is waiting for me to start a successful life.

How can I fool them into thinking I know what I am doing? What brought this on? A little thing called a graduation request form. That little white and yellow piece of paper brings immediate relief, and a paralyzing fear. It brings elation because you realize you are close to the end. Then you feel pure terror because you realize that the end is nothing more than an uncertain beginning. Now, as college students, we have been trained to keep quiet and hope that some smart person figures it out for us. But there is no paper to copy off of. Ladies and gentlemen, we graduates are on our own.

So, let?s take a look at the steps we must go through to become a responsible adult (shudder).

Step one: Freak out about the future. Done.

Step two: Find yourself in a dilemma between the principles you have spent the past four years cultivating and the promise of driving a BMW by the age of 30.

Step three: Choose principles, and spend the next three years living like a hobo and constantly looking for objects containing silver that you can pawn.

Step four: Witness children playing at a local school or a puppy running after its mother, burst into tears for no reason.

Step five: Propose to the next person you see, get rejected, burst into tears.

Step six: Decide that principles are for suckers, get a job where you have to wear a tie or dress, burst into tears.

Step seven: Find any man or woman who will have your sorry butt, marry, have kids with noses that constantly run, buy a house and a forest green BMW SUV, become buried under a mountain of debt and spend the next 50 years waiting for the sweet embrace of death.

But the future won?t be all bad. You will get to abuse the senior discount at Denny?s. That?s something to look forward to.The world that we live in is changing, and things have never been less certain. Hopefully, if we have learned anything from our parents it is that we must not let ourselves be defined by our careers and our possessions. In the end, the only things that will designate a person as rich are the friends and family they leave behind. In a time where things have never seemed more random and unreasonable, we are slowly learning that there really is no one way to live a life. That life is a process, right up until the very last heart beat.

What will the future hold for me? I don?t know. But the fear is occasionally squelched by the excitement, and the realization that soon it will be my time.

The book that is my life has just started to get good. I want to know what is going to happen next. I might have to skim a few pages when things get boring, and I?m sure I?ll get a few paper cuts along the way. However, I only get the chance to read this book once, and I?m going to make it count.

The future will come and nothing can be done about it. One can either fear the future and its instability or embrace the world and all of its beautiful dysfunction. The greatness of the world we live in is its imperfections along with the things that we perceive to be “perfect.”

So, with nine months to go, here I am, happy to be here, happy to be alive, waiting to tackle the future.

Ryan Flatley is an arts and entertainment writer for The State Hornet. He can be reached at [email protected].