Taking the road more travelled

So, I'm a senior.\n"So what?" you ask. "Why do I care what year you are?" Well, just stick with me here.\nLast week was the first time I had the fateful moment: I'm an adult. I know this should have occurred to me well before now, but well before now, I wasn't going to have to become an adult. Well before now, I had a great plan that allowed me to avoid adulthood for several more years.\nSee, I was supposed to go to graduate school for English. And by "supposed to," I mean I had always planned to, so I was just going along with the plan I had made as an 18-year-old. And besides, all my friends were doing it. My friends are all going to graduate school or medical school or optometry school, so I decided to go too (it should have occurred to me that my friends are all ridiculous over-achievers).\nBut last week someone asked me a very important question: "Why do you want to go to graduate school?" And you know what? I didn't know. I had no clue. The only answer I could think of was, "Because I'm supposed to," which isn't really an answer at all.\nSo after we talked for a little while longer, I decided to be brave. I decided to suck it up and admit to myself that I didn't want to go to graduate school. It was so backward -- normally you have to convince yourself to take the road less travelled, not the road more travelled. But that's what I did. I'm doing it all backward here, and that has put everything into a tailspin.\nRight then and there, in a matter of about 15 minutes, the entire course of my life changed. No longer was I going to be a professor of 19th-century British fiction. No longer was I going to spend a decade to get into a profession where I would be underappreciated and underpaid. Now I was going to ...\nI had no idea. What do I do now? I'll get a job. Sounds easy enough.\nBut once again, having a job means being an adult and being an adult means a whole new set of worries. I was worried about all the other crap that goes along with it. See, I'm that brat whose parents are nice enough to pay for everything, and now I'll be on my own in a world that I'm realizing is very expensive. I've never had to worry about all this before. How am I supposed to do it?\nI'm going to have to pay for rent and utilities and cell phone bills and car insurance and medical insurance. And what if I don't get an eye or dental plan? What then? Will I be able to afford to wear contacts? Or will I be back in those glasses I loathe so much? And I'll need new clothes for this great new job I'm going to be working at every day. As long as I get one.\nIt's all very scary being an adult, and I don't even know where to begin. I'm panicking here. I'm drowning in the deep end, and I desperately want a really good-looking lifeguard to rescue me. But slowly I feel I'm learning to doggy-paddle in this sea of adulthood, and hopefully I'll be swimming in no time.\nAnd as I learn to swim in a sea of worries, one thought comforts me: So many people before me have done it, so why can't I?