Right behind “What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?”, the question“What will your life look like in five years?” might just be the most popular icebreaker. I remember being 13 years old in the height of COVID when my teacher asked my class to write about where we’ll be in five years, then ten, then 15, then 20. Obviously, I said that in 15 years I’d be an OBGYN like Addison Shepherd because Grey’s Anatomy had an absurd chokehold on me and the rest of Gen-Z during the pandemic. After four years, my frontal lobe developed, and I realized that a life of screaming women and blood everywhere was not the way I wanted to live. But in three months, five years will have passed since my teacher asked me about my future at 13, and I can guarantee you my plans are a lot different now.
If you were to ask me what I want my life to look like in five years from now, I’d tell you that I would want to have graduated college, moved to New York City, be living with my aunt, and have found a well-paying job in some sort of finance field. But if you were to ask me where I really want to be in five years, I’d tell you that I would want to be living in Washington D.C., interning on Capitol Hill, and on my way to becoming a Legislative Director for a Senator. I’d want to be living in Georgetown in a quaint apartment and eat Call Your Mother every morning for breakfast. You’d then probably look at me and ask me if money grows on trees because moving to D.C. straight out of college and living in Georgetown would require me to be made of dollar bills, which sadly, I am not. So that’s why I’ll tell you that I want to work in finance and live in New York. Partially because that actually does sound fun, but partially because if I want to achieve my dream of living in D.C. and eating $12 bagels every morning, then I’m gonna have to be realistic.
When we’re younger and asked the question “Where do you want to be in x years?”, we jump to the dream which seems realistic at the moment, partially because our parents tell us anything is possible, and partially because we don’t know any better. At 13 I didn’t know what taxes were or what paying for my own healthcare was going to entail. But when I turn 18, 23, 28 and 33, I will.
