I was recently told that I needed to get my life plan in order, which was funny to me because for the most part, I have always had the same end plan.

And, as long as you’re not killing anyone, or any other illegal activity, there shouldn’t be any judgement on the plan one takes for their life goals.

Since I was seven I knew that I wanted to be famous. At first it was acting, and then it was being a star lawyer, but once I hit high school I fell in love with writing.

Granted with that I didn’t want to give up my face on TV, so I was very attracted to the idea of Journalism and Sportscasting.

It was like the best of all worlds— I had the opportunities to write about whatever I wanted, go to sporting events and talk about football all day. It was and still is a dream that hasn’t changed for eight years.

Now, in my fourth year of college and only having enough credits to call myself a first semester junior, you would think that I don’t actually take my dream seriously.

That, however, could not be the farthest from the truth. In reality, while on this journey to figuring out exactly what I wanted— I hit some rocky roads on the way to achieving this ultimate goal.

So it got me to thinking…

Why is it that you have to have a plan?

I mean life throws us curve balls 24/7. One day you could wake up in a great relationship with a ton of money and a great job and by the end of it you could be single, broke and unemployed. Although having all of that happen to you at once is incredibly uncommon—and I hope it never does—my point is that, yeah, you could wake up and plan out your life to be one way. But, that plan you had can be completely chewed up, spit out and stomped on by the universe, in a matter of 24 hours.

In my own life I have hit some high highs and some really low lows and while my end goal had stayed the same, the plan that I had to get there has changed—what feels like— millions of times. But, that shouldn’t matter.

For me, what I crave is having life experiences. To get to the end of my life and not feel like I missed out on any opportunities. Like, falling in love a little too hard, skipping class to go spend time at the beach, or even sleeping in too late.

College is supposed to be the time that we spend figuring out what we want to do for the next 50 years of our lives; how can we do that if we haven’t even lived it yet?

When I left high school, my plan was to pursue journalism at The University of Arizona, graduate in four years, and live happily ever after. Since then, I have transferred twice, thought about completely leaving school, dealt with car crashes and alcohol issues—not at the same time— and found out I was going to be in college for seven years. In addition to other various issues that made me re-evaluate what I was doing with my life.

But I never forgot my dream.

So, if you get to a point in your life where the universe has spit out and stomped on your life plan, or someone else passes judgement, this is what you should do:

Look around, realize that your life is far from over, but it is short. So, you pick yourself up and do whatever the hell makes you happy, until you reach your dream.