Now is the time to be selfish

If you don’t already know what makes Northeastern so special, then I wouldn’t call you a true follower of my blog, but that’s ok, I’ll remind everyone.

            We have what is called the Co-op program. This means that after three semesters, students have the option to apply and take a full time job, not an internship, but an actual job at big name companies.

For six months the student works as a full-fledged employee. Then she returns to school for more classes and eventually does it all over, repeating the process three times. So yes it takes five years to graduate, but when you come out, you have a year and a half of actual work experience.

Before anyone gets to go on co-op, we must take a class that teaches us how to write a resume, a cover letter, how to dress for an interview and how to interview successfully. I am currently in this class, although, I won’t co-op until next spring.

This week in class, our instructor gave us an assignment: plan out your college experience. I have to write on a piece of paper when I want to go on co-op, when I want to be in school in Boston and when I want to go abroad.

This task might not seem so hard for the average college student, but I suddenly found myself faced with a daunting task. I wanted to live in the now, not five years from now.

For a person who always desperately clung to a plan for my life, I suddenly became a “Why don’t we just wait and see what happens,” kind of person.

It’s not that I don’t want to plan my future; I just want to have options. What if I want to take a vacation or hop on a plane to Europe on a whim? Northeastern is saying I can do that only if I plan ahead.

So what do I do? Do I study abroad? Do I do three co-ops? Do I go abroad during a summer session? Do I only study?

The future is certainly up in the air.

I had a friend telling me about the pressure to stay in touch and be the person she was in high school and come home as much as she could. But she said something that made me realize she is absolutely right.

“Now is the time to be selfish.”

In ten, twenty, thirty years, who knows what my life situation will be, but I probably won’t have the chance to study abroad for six weeks, a summer or a semester. I won’t have the chance to take a job for just six months to give it a try and come back to the classroom afterwards. I won’t have the chance to be young, make mistakes, find myself and stumble upon my future. That is something I am sure of.

            So now is the time to be absolutely selfish. I need to think about me, what I want to do, what will make me happy and what will lead me to the opportunities of a lifetime.