When it came time to start touring colleges back in high school, I felt overwhelmed by the uncertainty of what the future held for me.

Most of my high school classmates had decided to stay put in Louisiana for college, with Louisiana State University being the most popular choice. Some of them even already knew what they were going to major in and what career they were going to take up after graduating from college.

I felt envious of these classmates for having their futures so nicely mapped out. I went through a phase where I was sure I wanted to be a pharmacist (but then high school chemistry happened), and then I thought psychology would be a pretty interesting field to go into (but then the intro class at Trinity happened).

History and communication were on the outskirts of my radar of potential majors when I first entered college. I thoroughly enjoyed those subjects, but I did not think they could translate to a career beyond journalism.

While I could have received a nice scholarship for continuing my education in state, none of the colleges in Louisiana felt like a good fit for me. It would have been nice to have been close to home and to start the new journey of college with high school friends, but I wanted to branch out and see what kind of person I could be with the kind of independence I had never experienced before. I did not want to get stuck in cliques of high school acquaintances and inhibit myself from meeting new friends.

One day after school, my mom pulled out one of those bulky college guidebooks she had purchased for me and showed me a page where she had circled Trinity University.

The description of the university in the book sounded appealing, with its small class sizes that I was accustomed to and its dorms “like palaces.” With that, we decided to make the nearly six hour trip from Lake Charles, Louisiana, to San Antonio, Texas.

Trinity was actually my first official college tour, and I think it spoiled me for the rest of them.

I loved the red brick buildings all over campus, and several people introduced themselves to me and carried on a friendly conversation like we had known each other for years.

Trinity’s campus seemed to be exactly the kind of environment I wanted for the next four years of my life, and every college tour I went on afterwards just could not measure up to Trinity.

One of the major things I appreciated about Trinity was that I could jump right into campus publications as a first year. Once I started, I did just that here, and the Trinitonian has proved to be an irreplaceable part of my four years at Trinity. Besides fostering some great relationships, the Trinitonian makes up a big chunk of my resume, and the practical experience I have gained from it will undoubtedly help me in the future.

While I have learned a lot in the classrooms here at Trinity, I think the most valuable parts of my education have taken place outside of class. The lessons I learned in my interactions with my friends and fellow students will carry much more weight than anything I learned from the countless Common Curriculum courses we had to take.

At the beginning of this school year, the plan was to go straight into law school after graduation. However, last semester I decided to take a couple of years off and enter the workforce.

Throughout this semester, I have been applying to several jobs all around Texas. With almost no replies to my job applications, I began feeling that same overwhelming uncertainty of the future that I felt while searching for colleges. I was just about ready to accept the fact that I would have to go back home until I found a job when I finally got a call saying that I had been hired for a position here in San Antonio. I am grateful that I get to spend more time in this wonderful city, and I am excited to really explore life outside of the Trinity bubble to which I was often contained during my four years here.

For those of you who are also feeling overwhelmed by the uncertainty of the future, be patient, have an open mind and know that things will work themselves out if you put in the hard work. In the meantime, enjoy the present and all the great things that Trinity and San Antonio have to offer.

Do not let Trinity’s rigorous workload hinder you from going on adventures. I know I was guilty of letting schoolwork bog me down a lot of times, but by the time you get to senior year, you realize academics are not everything. Besides, when is the next time you are ever going to be able to take a last minute, week-long road trip to the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas after college? Probably not for a while.

So be spontaneous, take non-life-threatening risks and live in the now.