On the standardized writing tests we were  forced to take throughout grade school, we were always expected to write about ourselves, to which I would always default to something stupid and outlandish.  In eleventh grade for the Texas standardized writing test, I wrote about an extensive addiction to illegal substances.  I have never been addicted to anything in my life, save for maybe videogames and definitely Neopets.  I am a liar.

I am a liar, yet when I wake up late and miss my 8:30 class, I can’t bring myself to lie.  My excuses for missing classes range from “I am a stupid dumb” to “I had fierce diarrhea, sorry,” which technically are lies, but all of them lead back to me calling myself a “˜dishonorable scum’ and offering my apologies for missing the class.  The worst part?  I’m completely sincere about it.  I feel horrible for missing classes because I sleep in.  It’s the worst feeling.

It was my favorite class, too.  Why oh why did it have to be at 8:30 in the morning?  Why could I not seem to wake up in time for my favorite class?  Easy.  I was up until 2 a.m. playing Neopets, because 2 a.m. in my time is midnight Neopets time, and I wanted to do my dailies.  Wow, that sounds a lot more pathetic in words than it did in my head, but whatever.  It’s the truth.

That was two years ago, and I didn’t know what the heck I was doing, and I still don’t.  College doesn’t really help you figure those things out even though everyone says it does.  Well, maybe it helps other people, but I’m still as lost as ever.  Do I want to major in religion?  Geology?  Both?  But I like to write, too, and I want to be a writer.  God, why does this have to be so hard?

I feel like my entire future is dependent on upon I do here, and well, it kind of is, and, that’s crazy!  I don’t feel any different, my actions don’t feel any weightier, but I’m five times as stressed out.  All of my friends know what they’re doing (it feels like), and here I am with a three-fourths-completed religion degree, realizing that I hate what I’m doing!  What if I start on something else, and realize I hate that, too?  What then?  What if it keeps going?  What if it becomes a perpetual prison of scholarly suffering?  What do I do then?

I guess I just have to keep trying.  Maybe in this ocean of things I hate, I’ll eventually find a combination of things I love that will make me happy in life.  Who really knows for certain?  We can’t divine the future, so we shouldn’t obsess over it so much.  Enjoy yourselves and what you’re doing and all that.  Of course, it doesn’t mean you or I should stop caring, just that we shouldn’t put so much weight on every little thing.

Lauren Schroeter is a columnist and a junior majoring in Geology and Religion.