With my lightning bolts a-glowing

Listen to: Wake Up - Arcade Fire

And so I've sat for the first of my four finals for this semester. Last finals of my college life.

LIKE OH GOD I'M GRADUATING

With added sparkles to emphasize my point, of course.

And you would, naturally, ask me what I'm going to do with my life next.

I'm going to find a job.

It's so easy to type this when I'm still in the process of coming to terms with the fact that I'm graduating. When you're preparing for your exams later this week, it's easy to forget that these finals would determine your CGPA on your diploma, on your resume - you might as well stamp it on your forehead when you go for job interviews, to save the hassle of the interviewer saying, "So I see that your GPA's so-and-so, etc etc".

At 20, apparently I'm not too old to graduate. It's the ability and the intelligence that matter, not the age...at least that's what my parents told me. I hope it works for me. I'm worried about my lack of experience (internship count: zero), my noob Excel skills (on-the-job experience: zero), and my ability to deal with people in the workplace (communication skills: Beginner Level Zero).

Probably I need to put this change in a different perspective, like...in Scott Pilgrim vs the World. One extra life for doing something right! Progress to the next level when you learn how to do computery stuff in half the time! Extra magic elixir when you gain confidence! And so on, and so forth.

The process would be all right, I suppose - it's the purpose that bugs me.

The question is this: What am I doing?

First it was: Getting a degree. Graduating with a respectable GPA. Complete a few professional papers. Grow up.

Now it just seems like: Get a job. Pass more professional papers. Gain experience. Grow up.

Okay, all right, that's not so hard.

And then what?

Get married?

Have kids?

Write?

Er................

Was talking to Stan the other day, and he was chirpily saying that maybe I could quit later - after I publish something lucrative. Like teenage romance novels like Twilight.

I don't know. Maybe when I see the boatloads of money rolling in, I might reconsider my career decision and write M&B novels for the rest of my life. Under a pseudonym, of course. I can imagine my father going "YOU'RE WRITING WHAT? OMG I AMS DISAPPOINT" if I ever decide to write them. Not that he speaks in Internet slang, but you get the point.

Hey who knows, your daughter might thank me for her romantic education via vampire sex and life-threatening births in the future. I'm just saying.

Sure, you could say, "What you need, my girl, is not a career change. What you need is a clear idea of your priorities."

I'm not even 21 (okay, lame excuse), but did you stop being a teenager one day, and woke up knowing what you wanted to do for the rest of your life?

It's a slow process, that I know, but sometimes the progress of the process does not keep up with the changes, and then where are you?

I can still remember my younger sister telling me how she couldn't wait to grow up, so she could do what she wanted. Being the concerned elder sister and pseudocynical teen I can be, I told her that growing up wasn't doing what you wanted, but doing what other people wanted because you knew you had to. And while you might rebel against it initially, you will come to like it, because, in all honesty, what would you do if you weren't doing this?

It's not learned helplessness. I've always liked the idea of free will and karma, and there is always a choice. More than one sometimes, but still, a choice. "But I can't choose otherwise!" Er, yes, you can, but you're just not willing to take the consequences for choosing the other one.

Eh I'm straying from my main point.

Anyway, just to end this -

Go read Pratchett's Death and What Comes Next.

If anything, sometimes it's better not to speculate what happened in the other leg of the Trousers of Time.