If You Want To Make God Laugh, Make A Plan

With all the time I have to myself, I do a lot of thinking and reflecting. Sometimes it’s hard, and it can feel lonely. But I have come up with some things that I enjoy thinking about. And today I was thinking about myself five years ago and what my plans and expectations were for the future.

Five years ago, I was moving into the basement of the Wesley Foundation and starting my junior year of college. My plans for the next five years were to finish undergrad in the next two years and stay at Virginia Tech for another year to get a master’s in education. I was accumulating quite a bit of things, especially for my kitchen, because the next move in my future was going to be to my own apartment. After grad school, I would find that perfect elementary teaching job, preferably at an inner-city school. I would move into my own apartment, pick out the perfect furniture, adopt a dog, and begin that fabulous life as a young, single, independent woman. I would be spending my money wisely, yet still having fun, and I would be saving up to buy my own house within a couple years.

Well, I went to William and Mary for grad school. My first job was teaching math at a middle school. And then I decided to join the Peace Corps, so I quit my job and took sporadic sub jobs and worked at a daycare while waiting to leave the country. And I have yet to have my own apartment.

I like thinking about the future. It’s fun to imagine the different directions life might take me. I think about what I might do after the Peace Corps. Maybe I’ll go back to America and find that elementary teaching job. Or after teaching older students for two years, I will want to teach in a middle or high school. Or perhaps I will want to keep teaching abroad, so perhaps I’ll find a job teaching in China or Kenya or India. I might go back to school to become a professor. Maybe I won’t be teaching at all.

As I sit here and think about my future, I can’t help but reflect on my past self thinking about the future. Five years ago, I didn’t even consider the Peace Corps as something I wanted, and now I can’t imagine being somewhere else. I wonder where life might lead me next. I wonder what plans I’m making now that my future self will look back at and laugh at.