When the Future is a Blank Page
October 28, 2025
Author: Tyler Peterson
“What are your plans after graduation?” Spring of 2022
Four years ago, as I applied to colleges and began wrapping up my senior year of high school, this question was one I was equipped and eager to answer. I felt like the whole world was in the palm of my hands, and I had never been more sure that I was in the right place. I knew I would be moving to Austin in the fall and starting my psychology degree in the pursuit of becoming a therapist. I knew I loved my new dorm, my roommate, the countless girls I had met through Instagram messages whom I was ecstatic to finally meet.
“What are your plans after graduation?” Fall of 2025
Now here I sit, four years later and that very question begs a completely different answer and evokes dramatically contrasting feelings. It’s these six words strung together that live in the back of mind–echoing loudly during all hours of the night and filling the quiet moments in between. Everyone around me seems to have a roadmap, a LinkedIn announcement, a graduate school acceptance letter, or at least a confident answer. Instead, I have an increasingly rapid pulse and a degree on the way– but no clarity, just pressure. It’s strange how a question that once symbolized certain potential can start to feel like a spotlight, exposing everything I don’t know.
As I lay in bed each night trying to quell the thought of, “You should have it figured out by now,” the teachings of Positive Psychology–one of the most inspiring classes of my college career–fill my mind. We spent weeks talking about rumination, mindfulness, refocusing, evaluation, and discernment. At the time, these were just concepts on flashcards I tried to memorize in hopes of a good grade. What I didn’t realize then was that these lessons would become more than academic— they would become a lifeline. Because at some point, I had to admit: I was spiraling.
Rumination is the tendency to replay the same anxious thoughts until they harden into belief. For me, rumination had turned uncertainty into threat. I wasn’t afraid of the future itself; I was afraid of the narrative I’d attached to it–that I’m behind, that I’m not enough, that I should already know who I am and where I’m going. But Positive Psychology teaches something radically simple: our attention is a spotlight, and we get to choose how and where it shines.
So I started applying it–not perfectly, not gracefully, but intentionally. When the anxiety took hold of my pen, I ripped out the pages of the story my mind was telling. I scratched out the writing: You’re lost. And rewrote it: You’re open. I redirected my attention toward what I could influence, and I reminded myself that uncertainty is not evidence of failure; it’s evidence of possibility.
Because if I strip away the pressure, the comparison, and the timelines I never agreed to in the first place, graduation is not an ending or a judgment–it’s a beginning. One with more autonomy, more choice, and more space than I’ve ever known to be possible. I don’t need to know the entire map, I just need to choose the next turn with intention and let the path unfold. There is no behind. There is only becoming. I don’t know where I’ll be in a year, five years, ten years; and what a gift! Wrapped inside are a million directions to choose from, and knowing that life has places for me I don’t yet know exist.
So to my fellow upcoming graduates: give yourself permission to breathe, to begin, and to become. You are not late. You are not lost. You are simply in motion–growing into someone you haven’t met yet. Welcome the uncertainty not as a threat, but as an open road. Trust that there is more ahead of you than behind you, and that possibility is not something to fear, but something to dance with. The future is not a deadline, it’s an invitation.
