What is to come after graduation?

For those of you who don’t already know, I’m a major television junkie. I watch all of your typical teen television shows like One Tree Hill, The O.C., Dawson’s Creek, 90210, Pretty Little Liars, and all of those other CW shows. What do all of these shows have in common, you might ask? The characters were all in high school. It’s not that I expected everything in real life to be exactly as it was on the screen, but I at least had a general idea of what to look for. We saw examples of how to have a romantic first date on the beach, how to cope with a break-up through ice cream and movie marathons, or how to fool your parents so you can sneak out to a rock concert. We saw all of these typical high school stereotypes time and time again on these shows, and they did somewhat prepare us for encountering these events in our own lives.

The problem is, none of these shows prepared me for what to expect in college. Seriously, why do they all skip the college years?! Can the writers really not make a storyline worth watching? One Tree Hill skipped over their college years and went straight from high school graduation to the characters returning after college graduation. The O.C. showed one season of college, but pretty much only showed their time spent at home on school breaks during that year. They only lasted one year of college in Buffy the Vampire Slayer before all of the characters dropped out. Shows like 90210 and Gossip Girl just got too unrealistic and out of touch when the characters went to college, that they weren’t even worth watching anymore.

Now, I am well aware of how ridiculous it must sound to say that I look to television for life advice and to set an example of what to expect in certain situations, but the truth is that we all do it. I looked to TV to know what to expect during my four years of high school, and I expected to be able to look to it for college. The truth is, nothing can prepare us for what is coming our way after graduation. At first that was a terrifying thought, but I finally saw the positive. College will be unpredictable. No tv show can accurately depict college life because it will be such different for each of us. We can study abroad, get internships, play on our college’s sports teams, perform on their stages, or write for their school’s paper. From here on out, nothing is as simple and predictable as it looks on tv. Our futures are in our own hands and we can write any script we want for them. Nobody can plot out what our experiences will be like, what kind of characters we will encounter, or what choices we will be faced with. Our futures are unscripted, and suddenly that’s not such a frightening idea. It’s thrilling. The future is ours to create.

These past four years have been amazing, but the next four will be all the more exciting. College will allow us to take our passions one step further. This is our chance to follow through on our passions and explore our minds more than ever before. These next four years will be unpredictable. There is nothing telling us what we should expect anymore. We can do whatever we want; go whatever we want; and be whomever we want. Our futures are ours to write. Don’t fear the unknown. Welcome the unexpected.