It’s Fall Quarter of Senior year. And what does that mean? That every conversation we have (whether its with your friends, whether its with your parents, whether its with the lady who cuts your hair) boils down to one question – what are you doing next year.

The undergraduate experience at Northwestern University is supposed to be about challenging the intellectual aptitude of its students, encouraging us to explore new disciplines, provoking our core beliefs. Yet after four years of debating, failing, molding and growing, we find ourselves doubting our own potential. We feel the pressure to fulfill a cookie-cutter mold of the ideal NU graduate. What if investment banking isn’t for me? And what if Teach for America isn’t for me? Isn’t there something in between?

As we grapple with discovering the right fit, we reflect back upon Premal Shah’s of Kiva keynote speech at GES 2009. During it he shared with us the words of Howard Thurman “Don’t ask what the world needs, do what makes you come alive; because what the world needs most are people who have come alive. ”

And with that we take comfort in knowing if we let this statement guide our decisions that everything is going to be alright.