I am a music major. If you are reading this when today’s Daily first appears, my senior recital is in less than 12 hours. Tonight, while you are doing whatever you usually do on a Tuesday evening, I will be attempting to play through Brahms’ “Sonata in E-flat major, Op. 120, No. 2” without making a complete fool of myself.

I am pretty much a nervous wreck. My clothes haven’t been washed in weeks. I eat sporadically, and when I do it consists of high-fat foods shoveled in around midnight. Grooming has become optional.

I’m not exactly the most enjoyable person to be around; hell, these days I’m idling on “bitch.” And I wonder why I haven’t had a date in over a month.

The senior recital is akin to a senior thesis. You spend countless hours working on it, satisfactory completion is required in order to graduate, and, as a result, you’re left on the brink of a breakdown.

I am extremely nervous about my recital. Nervous first for the obvious reason: standing up in front of my peers, teachers, friends and family, and playing the clarinet.

In some respects I have spent the last four years preparing for this moment (although my teachers probably would argue that I have spent only the last four days).

However, I think that I am more nervous about what comes after my recital: an uncertainty regarding life after Northwestern that I no longer will have the luxury of ignoring. I have no cushy job lined up at a consulting firm or investment-banking house, no immediate plans to attend business or law school.

What the hell am I going to do next?

Perhaps you or someone you know is in a similar situation. We have gone through the motions of higher education but remain clueless as to what to do with ourselves now. I see a support group in the making. We have degrees that we don’t necessarily want or will put to practical use.

College to me was a way to figure out who I was, not what I wanted to be. And while I do look at those of you with good jobs or grad school plans with a certain amount of envy, the truth is that I do not really like school. I have never really liked school. The mere thought of spending more time and money holed up in some drab building studying something I don’t care a lot about is enough to make me want to scream.

I am not going to be a musician after graduation. Nevertheless, I will leave Northwestern University with a degree in Clarinet Performance and a respectable but by no means awe-inspiring GPA. Basically, I now am qualified to wait tables or work the copy machines at Kinko’s.

I have no earthly idea what I will do in the fall. The Monday after graduation I am getting in my best friend’s car and we are driving across the country for a month. How is that for long-range planning?

I am 22 years old, broke, and I have no job. My parents are so proud.

Ah, well. Here’s to those of us who have no idea what we are doing with our lives, but who nonetheless are going to enjoy ourselves while we attempt to figure it all out. I couldn’t be happier for us.