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| Danielle Robinette Class of 2015 |
So, what’s next?
Sometimes I think adults (and no, I don’t include myself in that group just yet) are all ingrained with the same questions when it comes to kids on the verge of something new. When I graduated high school, every person I came across asked some version of the same few questions:
Where are you going to school?
What are you going to study?
What are you going to do with that?
At 18, it seemed really important that I gave the right answers to those questions. Now, in this weird pseudo-adulthood in which I live, I realize that they were all just space-fillers. These were the questions they were supposed to ask. The succession never changes regardless of how you answer the previous question. It seems that adults are always skeptical of the plans that young people concoct.
Maybe that’s a valid position to take. However, it seems to me that there’s no real use in asking the question if you’re going to be skeptical of any answer that could result.
At 18, all those questions did was cause stress and doubt and insecurity. I was never sure that the decision I was making was the right one. For every person who told me I seemed like I was on the right track, there was one telling me to focus on something else. But, hindsight being what it is, I shouldn’t have stressed. It didn’t where I went to school. It didn’t matter what I studied. It didn’t matter what I wanted to do with it. All that matter was that I was driven to be the best that I could be in whatever environment in which I found myself. I was quite fortunate to find the McConnell Center and to community of people who have supported me in Louisville.
Now, four years later, I’m right back where I was when I started my time at UofL. I face the same series of questions on a nearly daily basis:
So, what’s next for you?
Are you going to grad school?
What kind of job is it you want to get with that?
Part of me wants to believe that these questions are meant to push me to come up with a satisfactory answer (satisfactory to who, I’m not totally sure). However, just as they were four years ago, these questions are the automatic adult-generated response to hearing that I’m about to graduate. The answers still don’t matter much. The only difference is that now I don’t feel the need to have an answer at all. Maybe I’ve done this all backwards. Maybe then it was okay to not have a ‘good’ answer. Maybe now I really should know what I’m doing next. Maybe.
The truth is that I don’t know.
There are a million and one opportunities that sound like they could be the opportunity of a lifetime. I could teach. I could travel. I could, begrudgingly, go to grad school. I don’t think there is a wrong choice. I refuse to believe that my answer will define who I am or who I could be or who I will be. I’m not so naïve as to think that I can avoid the adult world forever. But, for now, I’m comfortable with the same answer to any and all varieties of these questions:
“I don’t know, but I’ll figure something out.”
Danielle Robinette is a senior McConnell Scholar majoring in Spanish and political science. She is from Ft. Thomas, Ky.