Nina A.

Photography by Cat White

If you’re reading this, it’s okay not to know what comes next.

In fact, if you're reading this, it's okay to be exactly who you are right now, confusion and all.

I’m a fourth-year student at UVA. And like a lot of students here, my life has always had some kind of structure. From kindergarten to high school to college, education has been the answer to “what comes next?”

In third grade, the answer was fourth grade.
In high school, the answer was architecture school at UVA.

Even during a global pandemic, I was one of the few people in my class who logged into every Zoom lecture, clinging to the structure that helped make sense of life when everything else felt uncertain.

But now, as graduation looms, that question, “what comes next?” has a sharper edge. It feels like the “real world” is knocking, loudly and knowingly, at my door.

I’ve changed a lot since the beginning of this journey. Honestly, I feel like I reinvent myself every week. Some days I’m a proud extrovert; some days I’m not. Some days I’m confident, others I’m full of doubt. Some days I want to be an architect more than anything; other days, I can’t think of a worse fate.

Some days, I want to run away. Some days, I can’t imagine calling anywhere but Charlottesville home.

And as graduation approaches, I find myself mourning the freedom I’ve had to change, to explore, to become different versions of myself in a space that allowed for it.

But here's the thing: that freedom doesn’t have to end. This framework of education isn’t just disappearing. I’m not standing on the edge of a cliff. I am standing on a foundation I can build upon.

The truth is, you don’t have to “figure it all out” in one year. You’re allowed to keep learning, growing, shifting. You’re allowed to feel four different things at once. That’s not failure, it’s being human.

And you don’t stop being human the moment you toss your cap in the air.

So if you’re reading this, it’s okay not to know what comes next (because none of us really do).

All you have to do is listen to and enjoy who you are right now.

Nina A., University of Virginia

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