Nine days. I have nine days to pack up my college life and enter the real world. There are 58 days until graduation – that’s 1,392 hours.

In these hours, I am expected to attend class for 592 hours and work as features editor at The Murray State News for 120 hours. I’ll be honest when calculating these hours and allow myself the eight  hours of sleep every night, because if I do miss it during the week, I will catch up on the weekends between episodes of “Dexter” on Netflix. It all adds up to 1,176 hours of time I have already scheduled.

With only 1,392 hours left in the semester, I have roughly 216 hours or nine days to get my life together.

I have resumes to send out and cover letters to tweak. I have to somehow keep an eye on my spending so I can afford my day-to-day life. Though my mom is more than happy to have me back home for a few months, I have to find a place to live if I find a job.

That also means shopping for things like furniture and dishes and other things that will be with me through the next chapter of my life. Though this should be exciting, I am finding it more terrifying than anything else.

I’m not sure what scares me the most. It could be the fact that commencement speakers tend to look out to the crowd and say, “This is the first day of the rest of your life.”

That statement makes me feel like I’m only getting older and that seems like a lot less fun. Maybe I just despise change and making decisions. Who knows?

Regardless, I am closer to graduation each hour. And each hour, what gets me through all of the meetings, classes and stress is that come December I will have a diploma that will provide me with credit for my accomplishments and starting a life in a career I love.

Erada Svetlana once wrote, “If it’s both terrifying and amazing, then you should definitely pursue it.”

And with that, I believe everything will work out if I seize those remaining nine days, instead of being scared of the future.

So as the sand falls through the hourglass, I’ll continue to keep my head up and remember it will all be OK. I’ll pursue the next chapter of my life, not because I am being forced to, but because it is both terrifying and amazing – and that makes it worth it.

Column by Hunter Harrell, Features Editor