A college graduate-to-be is like Luke Skywalker from Star Wars, standing on a ledge with stormtroopers closing in and blasters firing. For most college seniors, in their final days as a student, the stormtroopers represent the impending graduation date, and the abyss represents the immediate unknown future.

We’re all faced with a choice: to stand still on the ledge, or make the swing to the other side.

I’m in the same boat, which is what drove my desire to write this piece. I am in the full swing of figuring out just what in the world I am going to do after May 7th. As of now, my answer is very similar to the rest of my peers: no clue.

Am I worried? A little bit. Am I freaked out? At times. Am I confident it will all work out? Absolutely.

Change is hard. Change is difficult. But ultimately, it’s a part of life. You can either accept it, or you can flail your arms like Jar Jar Binks during a tantrum.

The truly terrifying thing about graduating is that for the first time in most of our lives, we don’t know where we’ll be in six months. Unlike the past, you knew you would be in a classroom listening to a professor lecture and spending 11 a.m. in Moody for chapel. Even as a high school senior, most of us knew that we would be at a college somewhere come the following fall.

Entering the real world is different, because there are no guarantees.

Students have to be confident that, like others before them, a door will open. Students have to understand that they have acquired a unique set of skills over the past four years to be able to perform highly for a job in the field they are trained for. And above all, students cannot join the darkside just because their dream job is not readily handed to them on a silver platter the day after graduation.

And that is where the true problem lies. Most students want to leave college and live the life mom and dad have right off the bat, failing to realize it took most of our parents close to 20-plus years to accomplish their achievements.

Few young adults are willing to take lower-level jobs just to get their foot in the doors. And when you close the few doors you have available, that’s when things get scary.

I’m not saying job searching for the first time isn’t easy on the nerves. I’m not even saying that you’re guaranteed a job right out of college. But I am saying that if you keep your doors open, humble yourself as you send out resumes, something will turn up. We have to be confident that we have not spent the last four years working hard to understand and excel in our fields, for it to count for nothing.

We have to believe something is out there for us.

So as graduation approaches like a squadron a fully-armed stormtroopers, remember this. Even Luke had a grappling hook to pull him and Leia across the pit to safety. It may be hard to see, but that college degree is your lifeline to the other side. Just swing across with Leia, who for this analogy, represents student debt, which unfortunately, we’re all stuck with.