I am 21, nearly 22 years old. I’m in my senior year of undergrad. And I don’t have the first clue what I want to do with my life.

This is something I think about pretty often because of the impending May graduation date upon which I will be tossed into the realities of adulthood, dropped from the comfortable nest of education in which I have lived for the past 17 years.

I’m not nervous because I don’t really know what I want to do after college, but I am terrified of not being able to find what I do want to do after graduating.

I strongly believe that no one should be living day-to-day in a tedious, repetitive routine, unless of course that’s what makes him or her happy. Personally, I could never see myself working a typical 9 to 5 job with the same tasks and responsibilities every day. The monotony of such a life would kill me internally and creatively.

I watch my parents every week. They wake up at the same time each day, have the same daily routine throughout the week and they spend every weekend the exact same way. I can predict their movements down to the date and time of my mother’s monthly hair appointment, and it’s absolutely exhausting. There’s no excitement, no life to their existences.

I’ve spent my four years of college studying journalism, and I have loved every second of it. It has absolutely been a life-changing experience. I hate that overused cliché, but there isn’t a more appropriate way to describe my experiences — the people, the professors and the general life skills I’ve gained from actually working semi-professionally in the field.

But I also feel like my time with journalism is coming to an end. I don’t want to go on to be a freelance writer or a newspaper reporter or even an editor. I don’t really have any desire to work in traditional media at all anymore. Not to down any of those as career choices, they just would never be enough for me.

There’s a part of me full of raging creativity waiting to be released once I know where and when and how to do so. And though I don’t necessarily want to pursue a career in the field I’ve spent four years studying, it has been an invaluable education.

So no, I don’t know what I want to do when I leave Marshall University, but I do know that I will do everything in my power to not allow the incessant monotony of life swallow me whole. I’m going to fight to do what I love, even if I have not found out what that is yet.

That may mean a few months or even years of finding financial support in dreaded part-time jobs as I search, but a few folded T-shirts, buttons on a cash register or sandwich assembly lines are nothing compared to the thought of living without motivation.

I think everyone should be inclined to look at his or her life and decide if what he or she is doing or plans to do is fulfilling enough to supplement a lifetime. Are we going to let existence swallow us in its mind-numbing clutches because we don’t know better, or are we going to live our lives to their ultimate potential?

Me? I’m choosing excitement. I’m choosing life.

Codi Mohr can be contacted at [email protected].