I am graduating in May. Come this spring, it'll be time for me to enter into the real world. There, I said it.

What will I be doing when this turn of events occurs? I have no idea. And that's not just concerning my career either — one factor of my future that I've devoted the past three years of college to — it's pretty much all aspects of my entire life.

I've been a journalism student at Penn State ever since I applied for enrollment way back in 1998. My class work, combined with the experience I gained working at The Collegian has helped me to figure out what I know I do not want to do with my life. I do not want to be a reporter. I, most likely, do not want to make my career as a writer, which is pretty much the area in which I spent the last three years focusing my studies. But that leaves the question, what do I want to do with myself?

For the past year I've been employed as an editor at the newspaper: first, as a copy editor last spring, and now as a news editor this semester. I've come to enjoy editing and I now view it as a potential direction in which I could take my career upon graduation. But then again, the hours of an editor works are grueling, it's a very thankless job and do I really want to spend the rest of my life staring at a computer screen?

As much as a try to convince myself that I know what I want to do with my life is as much as I question these choices. Career doubts are not the only ones that are plaguing my mind at this point in my life.

I am single, and happy with that status as of right now, but I can't help but wonder where I'll be in a few years in terms of relationships.

It's fun to be a senior in college with no one to answer to and all the freedom in the world to go out and meet anyone I choose. But it's still hard when four of my six roommates have serious boyfriends and talk about marriage often, so of course the subject enters into my consciousness as a result. I know I don't want to get married for a while, but at the same time, it's another open-ended aspect of my life for me to worry about.

Geographic location is the next on the list of matters that keep me awake at night. Where do I want to be when I graduate? Part of me (a big part, in fact) wants to just gather all my belongings together and bolt to the West Coast — San Francisco, to be exact — to start my life there. The only problem is I don't know if I'm brave enough to do that alone. On the other hand, I traveled all around Europe this summer and fell in love with places like Amsterdam, Seville and Rome. This enters into the equation a possible cross-continental relocation. But at the same time, being so far away from my friends and family was really hard — of course all I had to do to touch base with them was pick up a phone. If you haven't already picked up on it, I'm very conflicted. So with all these questions looming, one stands out among all the rest. How can I postpone being forced to find all the answers?

The difference between this question and all the rest is that I know the answer to this one. I can't.

I'm graduating in May whether I like it or not. After this semester, I only need 12 more credits, so there's no way to stretch those out without becoming a part-time student — a feat my parents, the bill payers, would never allow.

The thing I've come to realize, though, after hours and hours spent lying awake at night worrying, is that I'm still young and it's okay to be unsure about my future. I've got the rest of my life to answer questions like what do I want to be when I grow up? Or when and where will I finally meet my husband? Or will I enjoy living in California more than Pennsylvania? All I really can do is suck it up and look my future dead in the eye, ready to take on anything.

Of course I didn't come to this conclusion easily. It took a whole lot of "it'll be alright" and "everything will work out for the best," from issues relating to course grades to broken hearts. So let me do you a favor. Instead of you going through the same endless (and pointless) worrying that I did, just repeat these three little words next time you feel the anxiety building.

It'll be okay.