Within the next 15 years I am going to be happily married, have two kids, an older boy and a younger girl, live in a house with a big yard so my two dogs can run around, and be a successful genetic counselor. We will have holidays with the in-laws, Sunday dinner with the grandparents, and trips to the beach and Disney World throughout the year. This is my picture-perfect future I have planned out for myself, as almost all teenage girls have. The future sounds absolutely wonderful when you can just imagine and pick what you want to have happen. Unfortunately, life is not as easy as that.

            The first step of my picture-perfect future consists of college. I need to sit through pointless classes that have absolutely nothing to do with genetic counseling. I need to pay thousands of dollars in order to make money in the future. I need to graduate with a high GPA in order to get into grad school, while also trying to maintain a social life and get involved in numerous clubs to spice up my resume. Once grad school is over, I always thought the hard part would be over, but the older I get, the more I realize how difficult it is to get a good, stable job nowadays. Although college is fun in the moment, one thought about the future is all I need to start stressing out and trying to figure if my picture-perfect future will come true.

            Everyone always tells me to stop stressing about the future because I have so much time to figure everything out. That is not as easy as it sounds when I like to have every aspect of my life planned out ahead of time. I don’t like the fact that I don’t know if I will make it into grad school in the next four years, I don’t like the fact that I’m not guaranteed a job after going through six years of school, and I don’t like the fact I don’t know how the rest of my life is going to play out. But as for now, I am trying to live in the moment and not stress over the one thing I cannot control in my life, my future.