I drove home that night, not thinking further ahead than my headlights dancing on the nearly deserted Northway, but being fully aware that I was racing away from everything I knew.

I got home and Xina was on the phone. “Hold on,” she told the caller. “My housemate just broke up with her boyfriend…wait, what?” She looked at me, and after assessing that I was okay said “My friend Keith wants to know if you’re hot.”

Proof that life would go on. Not as usual, but it would go on.

And suddenly, I didn’t want any part of my life anymore.

I blew off my midterms and threw away my LSAT review book. I became a procrastinator. I changed my concentration and ditched the internship I had lined up in D.C. I started writing essays. I stayed up too late, and drank too much coffee, and smoked too many Clove cigarettes. I fell hard and fast for HWSNBN.

I jumped ship. I burned bridges. I abandoned The Plan.

I went on long drives on the back roads of what Albany area radio dubs “The North Country,” listening to music I didn’t used to listen to, trying to quell the panic. The only thing I dreamt of was escape from Skidmore and from college in general. I saw the sun rise more mornings that spring than all the times in the rest of my life combined.

I spent that summer serving lattes and walking around with a lump in my throat. It wasn’t until I returned to school for my final semester in the fall, wasn’t until after I spent the first Senior Night in Fain C, it wasn’t until that night that the Red Sox beat the Yankees in Game 7, that I got sick of it all, and started to make a New Plan.

In the months leading up to my December graduation, I made all sorts of plans. I looked into History PhD programs and got my TESOL. I applied for a few jobs. Plans to teach English in Europe were eventually dismissed, but grad school ambitions stuck around. After I graduated in December, I temped for awhile, figuring out what I was going to do for a year in the real world.

I decided, contrary to The Plan, to go to my graduation ceremony in May. At the government department reception, I listened to my Political Theory professor tell my parents wonderful things about my capacity as an academic. They had no idea of my glowing reputation – hell, I had no idea I had such a glowing reputation — they were very proud of me. Feeding on the good will I must have earned from those praises, I told my parents I intended to find a job in New York, and move there.  Truth be told, I was moving there for HWSNBN.

Less than two months later, I had a job, an apartment, and no HWSNBN (that’s another story) and a few months after that I began my grad school applications – political theory, not history.

My year in the real world was the best year of my life, chock full of experiences I wouldn’t trade for anything. I made friends, and I dated, and I revealed in the romanticism of being a 20-something single chick in New York City, and being free to do anything.

But that was part of The Plan, you see; the New Plan, the one where I learned to be a social butterfly, killing time until I got to the Ivory Tower. Whenever I lost my step, I was reminded of The Plan. At my birthday party, after everyone had gone home, CK and I continued to gulp beer and bond, and I lamented at my bad luck in the love life arena. “Rachel,” he said, in all of his tipsy conviction. “You are going to the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago.” He let that sink in.. “Fuck everything and everyone else. Seriously. Fuck. Everyone. Else.”

So no matter what happened, it was all leading up to grad school, there was still A Plan in place.

And here I am, halfway through my one year accelerated MA program at U Chicago, not the program I wanted to land in, the program that became, in my mind, the next step of The Plan towards a PhD program.

The Plan that might not even apply anymore.

I’ve never been comfortable with abandoning The Plan. I’m extraordinarily stubborn and exceedingly romantic, and I will stick with something until every avenue of hope is exhausted. I will fight tooth and nail to get what I want. I will makes the most untenable of situations work.  Brent tells me my incredible drive is one of my best features. For every situation, I have A Plan.

And three years ago I abandoned The Plan. The world didn’t end. I survived. I stopped coasting and started living.

Right now, I kind of feel as if I’ve just been going along with a lot of things, because they’re part of The Plan. I was doing what I needed to do to get into a PhD program, because the PhD program was always The Plan, and U Chicago was a mere detour to getting there. Somewhere in the three years since I last abandoned The Plan, this Plan became absolute.

I’m thinking it’s about time to abandon The Plan.

In the same way that falling in love can completely change your plans and stop you in your tracks, falling out of love has a similar effect. It’s been grueling, coming to the recognition that I don’t want this. It terrifying to get what you want and then realize you don’t want it. It doesn’t make me happy and I don’t want to settle.

I have no idea what I’ll do if I don’t go into academia. I don’t remember having other Plans. But maybe its time to stop being such a Hobbesian and realize that I’m going to be 24 years old, with a Masters degree, and plenty of time to live instead of Plan.

So I quote myself, writing a few months after I had abandoned The Plan, back when U Chicago wasn’t in my vocabulary, when New York City was still a skyline, when I didn’t think beyond the evening’s cup of black coffee:

“I’ll graduate. I’ll do what I have to do to feed myself. I will write my life story one day at a time. It will be a damn good one.”