with love from your future

The 4th year syndrome = freaking out because you don't know what you're going to do when you finish school at the end of April.

The 4th year syndrome has hit Alberta house especially hard in the past 72 hours. We are all agitated, anxious and perhaps feeling a bit sick about what will happen to us on May 1st.
You're saying that May is far off? Sure. A whole 3 months. 3 months to figure out where we're going to be living, what we're going to be doing next year and how we're going to make an income. PLUS we are still currently stressed out from the academic life that doesn't pause for consideration when we have our freak outs.

The solution?
We each create our own individual Plan A's. Then Plan B's. And keep going until we probably have Plan M's - maybe even Plan T's.

Then should all of our own individual planning fail we have the serious Last Resort Plan: we go to New Zealand and raise goats - or possibly sheep, we're still deciding.

The point is that we're realizing that while the future is exciting and filled with possibilities that could take us anywhere in the world, it is also scary and uncertain. It doesn't help that we don't - or at least I don't know what exactly it is that I want to do come May 1st. I haven't found the career that makes me jump and down and yell "I want to do this for the rest of my life!"

I have never been in a situation like this before. I always know what I want, and I always go and get it.
Not this time. This time I don't know what I want.
I think the universe is having a fantastic chuckle at my expense.

So in light of the past 72 hours, which each girl having a slight meltdown, we have decided to deal with it. We're going to sit around, have some serious girl time and each chocolate. Chocolate fondue to be precise.
For some reason the world looks brighter and conquerable when you're eating chocolate. I mean how can you not smile while eating chocolate covered strawberries and talking over life?

The Alberta girls have realized that we need to chill and plan. We also need to trust. We need to trust that our future is not out to get us, and that the world is not out to get us. And as Hamlet would say "ah, there's the rub."

philosophy of life: always keep chocolate in the house.