I never thought this day would come, but now we’re here. This is the last column I’ll write for The Stute. This is the last newspaper article I’ll ever write, and I never really expected it to get this far. I have, of course, considered what I’d like to say. I considered doing a short retrospect, where I looked at all my goals and checked to see if I accomplished them. But that seems a bit like recycling the same ideas over again.
So I’m looking forward instead. And I realize I have no idea where I’m going. As shocking as this may be, I don’t actually have a plan. All my life, the plan seemed pretty simple: go to school, get a job, and go on with life. But now that it’s all coming to a close, I realize how incredibly vague that plan was. Sure, there were details added to it over time, like where I went to college and what I decided to major in, but I never actually gave much thought into what I would do afterwards. Graduating college has been my life for so long, I forgot to plan for it to happen.
Not that I planned much from the start. I just take things one day at a time and deal with what is presented to me. I took a 5th year at Stevens because it was presented to us as a viable option, and I had the requisite GPA. I’m a TA for Design II because there was an empty slot after the school year started, and a friend of mine thought I’d be good at it. I only ever came to Stevens because of its proximity to my house and reputation for mechanical engineering. Mechanical engineering, by the way, being the STEM job that I chose at random in my senior year of high school.
I’ve gotten this far with just my wits and a vague notion of where I want to go. I have no idea how other people go through life with elaborate plans and step by step, year by year goals. All I really want is to get my homework in on time on Tuesday. Maybe that’s a bit narrow-minded, but taking things one problem at a time is all I’ve ever known. And until I actually have a diploma in my hand, I can’t worry about bigger problems yet. Maybe it’s not the right way to do things, but it’s gotten me this far.
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