Everyone finds her way, and everyone does it differently.

When I was a child, my family… Everyone finds her way, and everyone does it differently.

When I was a child, my family rarely went to amusement parks. This was partly because we were poor and partly because my brother and I were generally terrified of everything. Rollercoasters, E.T., standing in the lunch line at school – you name it, we were afraid of it.

But when an opportunity arose to take us to a relatively close amusement park one summer, my parents risked the humiliation of having scaredy-cat kids. We started out easy, in a kid’s area that had a plastic ball pit and some slides. We were having fun, so our parents decided to kick it up a notch and take us to a rougher part of the kiddie zone.

There, high above, loomed a wooden tower with little bridges connecting different levels. The only way up was by way of a large cargo net that swung down to the ground. I watched as other children, most of them younger than us, scurried up the net like little tree varmints. I knew what I had to do.

I gingerly climbed onto the net and pulled myself up a few feet. Not bad. My brother joined me, and we quickly began to scale the net. I felt like I was in Army training, kicking butt in my camo gear. I was almost to the top, when suddenly my foot slipped out of a rung. As my heart fell into my stomach, I regained my footing. My brother moved ahead and made it to the top, doing the Rocky victory dance, as I clung for dear life to the net.

I was paralyzed with fear. Literally just a few feet from the top of the net, I couldn’t move. My body shook as I tried to get my brother’s attention as he pranced around the platform above me, while other children hurried past me and caused the net to swing.

That was it. I was going to be stuck there forever.

Well, maybe not forever, but a good 10 minutes or so later, a young worker finally climbed up the net and saved me. When we made it to the top, all I wanted to do was get back down, so he took me down the “employee only” way.

I spent the rest of the day angry at myself. I didn’t even take the time to relish in making it to the top when the worker saved me; I simply gave in and allowed my fears to keep my feet on the ground. I rode the merry-go-round bitterly for the majority of the afternoon, until our parents announced it was almost time to leave.

I had to try one last time. It was now or never. I insisted we go back to the cargo net. I climbed onto it. I put one foot in front of the other, pulled myself up and was almost to the top when my foot slipped again. I caught myself. Stopped and breathed. Took another step up and continued until I made it to the top. It was the most incredible view I had ever seen in my few short years. I had arrived there by myself, and I stood at the top on my own two feet.

Sometimes you have to stop and breathe. Relax. Take a look around and enjoy the view. You’re going to be OK.

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in my last few years here at Pitt, it’s that life truly is what happens while you’re making other plans. Before I came to Pitt my life was about planning. I did everything right, studied hard and was involved in everything that looked good on my academic record.

Then life happened and threw some wrenches into my planning. I almost didn’t come to Pitt. I didn’t think I could do it. How can you move away from your family and not know a soul and execute a well-thought-out plan? The answer is – you can’t.

I planned on working hard and studying hard, but I didn’t plan on meeting incredible people that persuaded me to stay up all night in Towers and run to 7-Eleven at 4 in the morning for hot dogs. I planned to receive an extensive education, but I didn’t plan on garnering so much of my education outside of the classroom – much of it occurred in my heart. I didn’t plan on meeting the best friends I have ever had only to have them scattered wherever the wind may blow them in a week when we graduate. I certainly didn’t plan on crying on our senior bar crawl when Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ’69” played and I heard the words “those were the best days of my life” and looked around at my friends and immediately knew that so far, these were the best days of my life.

But you can plan all you want. It is the unexpected that makes life worthwhile. You can spend your life fighting change and fencing yourself in. Or you can climb out of your safety net and fall into something even more incredible than you could have ever imagined. Say farewell to Jessica at [email protected].