Editor's note: All opinions, columns and letters reflect the views of the individual writer and not necessarily those of the IDS or its staffers
Sometimes I find myself thinking about how I’m going to get a job after I graduate. Other times I worry about how I’m going to make enough money to live in the city I want to live in. And that’s how I base all my decisions in the present.
As long as I remember, I’ve been focusing on the future. On how successful I want to be, how I’m going to manage to get the life I dream of, what I have to do in order to achieve long term goals or planning every step I take until I’m 30.
It’s not bad to worry about your future. But it’s bad when it starts to cause you discomfort or anxiety.
That feeling is not as unusual as I think.
A 2026 study by sociology researchers found that uncertainty was associated with greater future anxiety, which made me think about how many of the decisions we make in college are about a future we can’t decide yet. We choose majors without being sure of the type of job we want. We learn what internships are out there and quickly realize that we have to get them to build an attractive resume.
And somehow, we are expected to have a plan for all of it.
College already comes with plenty of things to worry about. Gallup found that 66% of college students experienced stress and 51% experienced worry during much of the day before they were surveyed.
Yet I still find myself adding more problems to my list.
I’ll be studying for an exam and suddenly my brain will decide it is time to wonder whether I will have job opportunities by the time I graduate. I could be working on a paper, but instead of thinking about the deadline, I think about whether my portfolio is good enough for internships.
Sometimes I think I am being productive by thinking this far ahead. The people I grew up with told me that planning my future was responsible. But I’m not actually feeling responsible by worrying more about something I don’t know than the homework I have due at 11:59 p.m.
Preparing might be making a plan for next semester or researching possible careers in my field of interest. Worrying means doing all those things and still feeling like there is something missing — that you are falling behind even when you don’t know what will happen afterwards. We start treating internships, resumes and career plans as deadlines for a future still years away, wondering whether we are doing enough to become the person we think we should be.
Instead of actually planning, I am self-sabotaging.
I remember that whenever I found myself panicking about what I was going to do after graduating high school, my mom would tell me not to try to “eat the whole world in one bite.”
She keeps telling me that nowadays because I still call her whenever I’m getting anxious about my future.
And it’s true.
Why should I worry about my future when I don’t even know what I will eat tomorrow?
I’m 18. I should be enjoying my second year of college, the weekends, club meetings and the new experiences that come with growing up. I have no business worrying about my financial stability at 30 years old because that’s in 12 years.
That’s a lot of years. I could be a different person by then.
It is OK to worry about what you’re going to do with your career. I’m still discovering different areas in my major that I am interested in and I don’t expect to have everything figured out yet.
It is also OK to worry about internships for next summer, especially if you never had one and you don’t know the exact process of it. There are things I can do to prepare for those opportunities without panicking about what will come later.
And it is OK to feel like you are falling behind while you’re seeing everyone else achieving their goals. It’s easy to compare your progress with everyone else’s, even though you don’t know what their lives will look like in a few years from now, like they don’t know what mine will look like.
But worrying about all of it at once won’t make any of it happen faster.
Sometimes it’s OK to not know. We are meant to not know what will happen in the future. Uncertainty makes us anxious, but it’s part of discovering who we are. We are still in the age of discovering what we like, what we want in life and where we want to be. Don’t burn your brain trying to solve a problem that you don’t know will happen.
Burn your brain studying on the exam you have next.
Astrid Alomia (she/her) is a sophomore studying journalism with a concentration in public relations and a minor in marketing.
