And the award for most worried about career choice for the longest period of time goes to...

Me.

I think I'm still a kid. Or I want to be. Friends are getting married, moving in together, having babies, getting job promotions or salary increases (in no particular order), and I've found myself sitting in the newly renovated Barnes & Noble on 86th and 3rd feeling like I was transported back to college.

I wake up everyday utterly unconvinced that I am doing the right thing by entering counseling grad school and abandoning education, the prospect of medicine, or the idea of being a writer/artist. What keeps me from being certain is the fact that I am financially strapped. I'm on loans, and it's really hard to imagine SIX to EIGHT more years of it. I feel like I am faking living. Like I'm a fraud. I'm living on only loans. When I buy you a drink at the Halloween Bar Bash, it's a lie. I will be in serious debt, and then graduate to make the same amount I did as a teacher. It'll take approximately 44 years to pay back what I take out. I might be exaggerating. I hope I'm exaggerating.

I walked over to the Careers section and picked out a few books. "The Book of the 300 Best Careers" made the cut. I started flipping through it. It had headings of job areas, like "Social Services," or "Health Professions," and underneath it had a long list of what it's about, what prerequisites you need for the job, the average and median earnings nationwide, and how lucrative it was.

The layout and information in this book looked all too familiar. A wave of nausea washed over me when I realized that I was still the same 18-year-old I was nearly 9 years ago, crossing the palm tree'd lawn at UF to get to the career counseling center. This was the same freaking book I looked at in my first year of college. The same. Exact. One. And this book did as little then as it did now.

I am nothing if not consistent in my Award-Winning Indecision and Best-Supporting Anxiousness. Thank you. Thank you.