As a chubby-cheeked, pigtail-sporting elementary schooler, I never understood why my friends decried the end of summer. I would literally count down the days until August, when my mom would finally take me to Staples so I could pick out my favorite zebra patterned mechanical pencils, funkily-colored pens, and a new binder. I would pick out my ‘first day of school’ outfit weeks in advance, and, the night before school, I carefully placed each pencil in my pencil case and zipped it into my well-loved backpack. There was only one thing missing: my planner.

I’m not quite sure when the practice started, but I am sure that while many parts of my first days of school have blended together, I always remembered getting my new agenda. When school finally started, I practically ran into my new classroom, eagerly plopped my lunchbox in my cubby, and patiently sat at my desk. I eyed the front of the room with anticipation, the sparkling set of agendas stacked on top of my teacher’s desk. I couldn’t wait to have one of my very own, to be able see the whole year in front of me, all of the holidays and school celebrations in my calendar.

Whenever a teacher pointed to the section of the whiteboard devoted to homework, I dutifully wrote down every last word. I’m not sure if it was just an excuse to use all of my colorful pens, but I was ecstatic every time I was able to cross an assignment off my list.

As silly as it sounds, I am still that girl that counts down the days until she gets her new planner. This year, I headed to Bando and picked out a fabulous floral number that even came with stickers and little motivational messages reminding me that “girls are the best” and “your hair looks great today!”

How could you not want to use this fabulous planner all the time?!?! Look at all those spectacular stickers!

I am still the girl that can’t wait to cross something off of her to-do list. Looking back at the past weeks of my life looks like a million scratched out and highlighted lines of chicken scratch. When I’m plagued with writer’s block or just procrastinating, I’ve started to write down a plethora of tiny things to do – just so I can have the satisfaction of crossing something off. Even looking at a day in my planner from last week, I had my real homework written down on one side, and a second list parallel: send emails, go to the Motley, take a shower, go to the bookstore, get snacks. When it gets really desperate, you may even catch a glimpse of “fill water bottle” crossed off a few days before a big paper is due.

It’s almost to the point where if it isn’t in my planner, it doesn’t get done. If it isn’t an academic assignment, club meeting, or mundane task that can be crossed off, it isn’t worth spending time on. I have let myself be lulled into the idea that I must always be working productively to reach the end of my to-do list. But some things can’t always fit into little time-slots.

With the priority I have placed on being able to say things are ‘done,’ I am reluctant to choose to spend time on the things that I can’t check off as done for fear that it will be wasted time: exploring a new trail or the city of Los Angeles, finding a good spot to take photos, or even remembering to have some me time with a good book.

I can’t even count the number of times I have bailed on a fun adventure with friends because my planner was too full of assignments not yet crossed off.

While it it is incredibly important to make sure that I can finish and keep track of all of my schoolwork, my planner has become a bit problematic (despite all of its empowering messages, cute cartoons, and fun holiday reminders). This semester, I hope to remind myself that there is time for both the academic and the adventures, and one is not more valuable than the other. It might take a note in my planner for me to remember, but at least it’s a start. Maybe I should even try living a planner free life for a bit, and see what I manage to make time for!

It’s no secret that I have no idea what I want to major in, let alone what I want to be doing for the rest of my life. And sure, I’ve heard the “statistically, you’ll change your career 5 times in your life” and “your major doesn’t have to be exactly what you do with your life” more than a handful of times. I have also heard that I will “find my passion.” Almost as soon as the words “undeclared” escape my lips, it’s the first response to come spilling into the conversation.

If I had a dollar for every time someone told me that I would “find my passion,” I wouldn’t have to take out any more student loans. Hey, I might even have enough stocked up that I wouldn’t need a degree at all.

On the surface, those three words seem comforting and casual. Spoken sort of like my ‘passion’ is in the same place that I left my keys – they’ll definitely turn up if I just look a little harder. Don’t worry about it the voice tells me, “you’ve still got time.” These statements stack up, coaxing me to believe that I will simply stumble upon that magical ‘thing’ that I love so much. Sometimes, this golden phrase is followed up with a personal anecdote of that life changing class, the inspiring internship, the sudden moment of clarity.

But what if this sort of passion doesn’t exist for everyone? Not everyone can know from day one of kindergarten that they want to be a doctor or a firefighter or a teacher or a scientist. Right? I can barely choose what I want to eat for dinner. I couldn’t tell you with confidence who I am as a person, what meaningful activities I would choose to fill a completely free day, or the things that I think are most important for me when looking for a job.

I brought this up with my boss at work the other day, and she instantly told me that there is no such thing as ‘a passion.’ You are shaped by your experiences and constantly changing, and there isn’t any one single thing that is the only way for success.

My mom is a firm believer in the no-passion camp. As an undergrad, she studied french literature, economics, and computer science. She went to business school, later got a certificate in Organization Development, and now works as a consultant. Every time I let slip over the phone that someone else has told me to find my passion, she breaks out into an exasperated (and by now quite practiced) spiel: being told to find ‘a passion’ is stressful. We can be good at plenty of different things, and being expected to pick a passion out of thin air isn’t sensical and often not possible. It takes our constantly changing experiences – classes, work, extracurricular activities and hobbies – to work towards understanding what we are good at and have energy around. We can’t expect a magical answer to pop out and come to the rescue. Only from the multiplicity of our experiences can we constantly continue to learn about what seems to be the best next step.

Both my boss and my mom (two of the women I to look up to most) gave me the words that holds much more promise, honesty and truth than the unrealistic ‘find my passion’ catchphrase. Each of these incredibly driven and successful women said without a trace of irony in their voices: “I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”

And maybe that’s the truth of it. Maybe I will always be searching for what feels like a perfect fit. But in the meantime, I will keep learning from the array of activities in my life. And while it would be much more comfortable to confidently rattle off a major and definitive career aspiration, I continue to say that I am still undecided. And that’s okay.