We are not where I thought we were, but I think I know where we are now…

For as long as I can remember, I have had a plan.  Everyone makes a fuss about going off to college and how scary it is supposed to be, but that was never an option in my life.  Attending and graduating have been an inevitable as long as I can remember.  I followed the same path as all good little nova girls, elementary school club sports, summers at camp, APs in high school, a liberal arts education. When I went off to college I pretty much knew what to expect.

Now is a different story.  When you graduate college, no one makes a very big deal of it.  I guess it is assumed that once you make it this far you know what you are supposed to do.  For me that has not been the case.  I feel like for the longest time I have been following a path (not an obstacle free one, but still) and suddenly I have reached a clearing with no obvious way out.  That sounds far more ominous than I intend.  It is like on my first backpacking trip.  My friend Andrew lead the trip and insisted that we hike in by moon light.  It was beautiful and we could see all the stars, but eventually we reached a point where the trail just seemed to stop so we camped for the night.  In the morning we had to pick a direction and bushwhack in a general direction hoping to find our way back to the trail.  I feel like that is the next step in my life as well.  There is no clear path and instead  I am walking in one direction hoping to find the right path.  I intend to spend the next few years of my life bushwhacking.

During that trip, Andrew would frequently stop, consult the map and declare “Well, we aren’t where I thought we were, but I think I know where we are now”.  It turned out to be an amazing weekend and we did find our way out of there in an appropriate amount of time.  As for my current bushwhacking plans, I will be spending this summer interning on an organic farm in Michigan.  I plan to write some about my work there.  Then in August I will head to Europe to attend graduate school.  Where is still to be determined.  I decided that I was finally doing things people might enjoy reading about, so the majority of this blog will be factual.

That’s about it for now, hope everyones summer is getting off to a fun start.