Living For the Present, Wishing For the Future

Make a wish into the well, that’s all you have to do. And if you hear it echoing, your wish will soon come true.

Oh, Snow White. If only it were that simple.

When I was a child, I believed in the power of wishmaking thanks to fairy tales, Disney movies, and bedtime stories. Part of me still holds onto the whimsies of wishmaking from my childhood, too. I no longer dive for the “lucky penny” on streets, but I still cast wishes on fallen eyelashes, shooting stars, and birthday candles. And, when my father asks, the occasional wishbone or two. It can’t hurt, right?

But the real power that wishing holds is its connection to us in our everyday lives. Unlike the Disney princess stories I grew up with, there is no guaranteed happy ending for us in the real world. In this sense, wishes hold a different significance in our lives. They are an extension of our desires, our needs, and our aspirations. We wish for things both in and outside of our control, and sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which.

I wish I had more time.

Often, my college years seem like a blur, and they aren’t even over yet. Sometimes I wish I had met more people or taken different classes. Sometimes I wish I studied something different altogether. But at the end of the day, I wish I had let myself have more fun. I established relationships with professors, consistently took almost, if not, the maximum number of credits, and always held a job, checkmarking the boxes of things they tell you that you need to do in college in order to succeed. The only exception, the summer of 2020, put everyone in the same boat when nearly all study abroad and in-person internships were canceled. But what even happened that summer? To time and college in general? As a freshman and sophomore, I often stayed in on the weekends to study, watch movies, or play board games with friends. If not, I could be found working one of my part-time jobs, because I soon learned that life is expensive and I wasn’t as wealthy as many of my peers at U-M. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t necessarily regret those nights spent in the East Quad lounges. Hard work paid off in the form of good grades and personal satisfaction, and some of my best memories consist of laughing long into the night with friends in dorm common spaces. And I did have my fair share of fine arts performances, extracurricular activities, and bubble tea adventures. But if I could wish to do something different, I would’ve gone out more. I didn’t drink, and I let my fear of awkwardness prevent me from going out to parties. I wish I wouldn’t have been so stingy with money and gone out to eat more often. I wish I would’ve gone to more sports games besides football. I wish I had used the gyms more than the handful of times when a friend dragged me with them—even now, I still never use those recreation centers, even though it could be good for me and not doing so is a waste (got to love all those added tuition fees).

Among all those wishes and regrets came the excuse that I had two more years to do all of those things. I’d work really hard to figure out my major and career goals my first two or three years and then go out with a bang, at least for my senior year—or at least, that was the plan. No one could’ve predicted a pandemic.

This is where balancing “wishing,” “doing,” and “waiting” comes into play. For the first half of my college career, there was desire but a lack of “doing.” Then, in the second half of my college career, I’ve had a drive to do things but a compulsion to wait until it’s safe. Now, with different variants like Omicron popping up yet a prevalent desire to carry on with our lives, my last semester is in a weird in-between period of life forging on, masquerading as normal. As much as I would really like to go to Skeeps, Rick’s, and all the other Ann Arbor college bars and party staples, I’ve also felt obligated to wait for cases to go down. My

by Elizabeth Schriner

wishes to make up for lost time and simultaneously make the last few months count aren’t helped by the pressure of the clock winding down.

If you’re reading this, it’s highly likely COVID-19 threw a wrench in your college plans, too. What have I been doing to compensate for all those lost wishes besides complaining? I’m still working, taking 18 credits (so many classes, so little time!), and otherwise being pretty darn busy. But I’ve also made it a priority to spend more time with friends and simply enjoy myself. Even though I didn’t make much of an effort to attend sports games other than football in the past, I’ve now attended seven different sports—nine if you count the difference between men’s and women’s teams—and hope to go to a few more. I’ve enjoyed snowball fights with friends, gone to a few outdoor bars (even if I didn’t drink much in comparison), and visited some Ann Arbor restaurants I had been wanting to try. I have plans to attend arts events, throw themed birthday parties for friends, and at the end of it all, attend all the different graduation ceremonies I can. Plus, at this stage of my college career, my classes are mainly those I elect; besides a statistics class, I’m basically pursuing two passion projects (senior theses) and get to make music and art this final semester.

I don’t think I’ll ever stop wishing I could have done certain things in college differently, like cherishing the present more instead of stressing out over grades so much. It’s imperative to work hard toward meaningful progress and our long-term goals, but now I understand the futility of using the bigger picture as an excuse to constantly bypass the little joys in life. While I can’t necessarily make my wish of reverting time come true, I can take action to make the most of the time I have remaining.

Where does that leave me and my wishes? Well, I wish I knew what my future had in store.

Grad school? Perhaps, but I’m not 100% sure on what to study and how it would benefit me long-term, or really even what different tracks in graduate school are all about. I also don’t want to go further into debt before I’ve figured it out just so I can go back to school, as much as I love it. A job? Of course, that’s the next step, right? Except working full-time means the start of planning how to spread out those 10 vacation days across the year yet still have things to look forward to. Goodbye, winter breaks. Hello, saving for retirement. Graduating from college is often viewed as an accomplishment—and it is—but the anxiety that comes with leaving school and entering the “real world” is tangible and pervasive. I know I’d like to travel, eat lots of good food, and overall make my parents proud, but how do I get to that point? Drowning in uncertainty, it’s easy to go mad over worrying about what the “right” choice is, be it a career path, graduate school, or whatever other future opportunities are presented. In my case, I had a choice, albeit a difficult one: spend a few years living and teaching English abroad, or accept a position that offers security and a way to start paying off those student loans. As much as it pained me to turn down the former, which had been my goal for some time, accepting the latter is action towards my long-term career trajectory and wishes for the future: stability, and the happiness, healthcare, and means for a family that it can help provide. I never imagined ending up where I am, but I’m hopeful that the growth I will make, skills I will learn, and people I will meet will make it all worth it.

There are so many wishes one could have. To gain fame and fortune, better health, happiness and positive feelings. I’ve wished for all these and more throughout my lifetime. Occasionally, I still revert back to my middle-school daydreaming and wish that I were a famous movie star or a character in a book I’m reading. Sometimes, I worry that the wishes I discussed have become too big a part of my college self, but I’d hate to live in a world where it’s a sin to make a wish. In the process of thinking about what I need to do to make my dreams a reality, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I don’t know what my future looks like, even though I wish I did. So for now, I’ll continue working towards my goals, however static or fluid they may be, and hope to eventually make the best decision for me.

For the past, present, and future, there are many things I’ve wished for that can’t be done, some things that have a rare chance of happening, and others that are quite probable if only I put in the work to make them happen. I know that to believe in my wishes, I have to believe in myself, even if the unknown is nervewracking. I’m a worrier, but at the end of the day, I’ll keep wishing.