I've learned a lot of things while in college, most of which are largely unimportant. The truth is, my religion major has taught me nothing but trivia (albeit highly interesting trivia). And my creative writing major? I honestly don't feel as though I learned anything in my English classes. I must have absorbed something because my writing has significantly improved, but I can't think of a single thing that I've actually learned. I think I've just been practicing more.

That's not to say that I didn't learn anything of value in college, because I did. I've learned some of the most important lessons in the world here. I've learned that you can try and try and try and still not be rewarded for your efforts. I've learned that there are times when life simply will not work out the way you want it to, and there won't be a damn thing you can do about it except to accept it. I've learned that you can't make old friends and that it's incredibly important to keep the ones you've got. I've seen that there are different measures of success and failure, and I've seen that when people are measuring on two different scales the results are disasterous. I've learned the importance of holding on to the hope that some day things will get better even though they most likely won't. I've learned how wonderful it is to be independent...and how utterly terrifying it is.

I guess my point is this: Life happens, and as much as you think you're in control of it, you're not. Life will do what it wants to do; it'll happen regardless of whether or not you want it to. Life has no regard for individual wishes or desperate pleas. Life is on its course already - and maybe we can influence it to a degree, but it's largely not up to us.

Call it god, call it destiny, call it life. What happens to each one of us is the culmination of a million different factors and circumstances that are absolutely out of our control. Maybe the guy who reads my grad school portfolio at Goucher will be in a really shitty mood that day because it's his first day back at work after his son was diagnosed with leukemia and will therefore reject anybody he reads that day. So it goes. The only thing one can do is hope - and not really believe - that it'll work out somehow.

Not that one shouldn't try...because effort never hurt anyone.