And you may ask yourself, “How did I get here?”

Talking Heads cliché aside, the sentiment of the above lyric has rung especially true for me over the past week and a half. It hasn’t completely sunk in yet, and I haven’t totally internalized this new state of mind, but I feel the unavoidable truth leering at me through all my best attempts to push it back into the recesses of my consciousness. And I’m not alone. Not by any means.

Close friends and casual acquaintances; classmates I haven’t seen since a writing seminar freshman year: Speaking with others from the class of 2010, I’ve noticed that we all seem to be grappling with the same question, one that continues to confound and alarm us even as we come to terms with the very obvious truth of the matter:

“We’re seniors? How did that happen? What. The. Fudge.”

It’s scary how quickly three years go by. But it isn’t even so much all the territory heretofore covered that has myself and other seniors so noticeably flustered — it’s the thought of the future. Where are we going to be a year down the road? How do we plan for the real world? What are we going to do with our lives? What’s next?

Something you should know about me is that I am, from time to time, prone to incessant self-evaluation. It happens.

The flipside of that personality tick, however, is that I’m also receptive to serendipitous flashes of perspective, those seemingly mundane details of life from which you can sometimes glean helpful insight. For the purposes of this discussion, said insight was courtesy of college dropouts playing bongo drums in a West Village pub.

Here’s the story: Over the summer, I ran into a group of former high school classmates in a bar in downtown Manhattan. We got to talking and, while none of them really seemed to be piecing together a life plan — though one tells me he’s gearing up to pursue a lucrative vocation in massage therapy — I got the impression that they were pretty OK with how things were turning out.

Who’s to say they have to waste time and effort investing in a “future,” or pursuing a “career”: They’re doing just fine without all of that stuff, thank you very much. They’re making forward progress, even if it isn’t of the sort deemed “respectable” by “society” or whatever.

And who are you to say they aren’t going places? They’ll have you know that they put together a rock band this summer, and word on the street is that their sound is DURTY.

Sure, the name of the band has some uncomfortable connotations (“Constant Flow”) and, sure, they mostly just play mediocre Dispatch covers; but to count out Drew (acoustic guitar, lead vocals), Mike (emcee) and Kevin (bongo drums) just because of their lack of discernible talent, originality or ambition would be to miss the moral of this parable entirely.

The point here isn’t that you shouldn’t consider your future, and it isn’t that you should throw caution to the wind and just do whatever the hell you want. On the other hand, the Constant Flow anecdote isn’t meant as a cautionary tale of privilege gone bust, of college kids from upper-middle class backgrounds effing it all up. All of these things might be true to one degree or another, but here’s the thing — it all really depends on the individual.

Therein lies the rub: Some people are successful and miserable; others are aimless, but content.

If you’re here at Cornell then you probably have grander designs than the open mic night at a downtown dive. And that’s great. Knowing where you want to go, and how you can get there, are important steps in preparing for a life of responsibility. It’s also OK, though, to take the time to figure out what you want, even if it you don’t have it all sorted out by commencement.

Freshmen: You’ve all probably been inundated with advice over the past couple of weeks — from family, from orientation leaders, from RAs, from Sun columnists.

Still, the best advice I can offer, given my extensive experience with self-evaluation, is to avoid getting so caught up in every letter-grade and leadership position that your curricula vitae becomes the center of your existence.

If your life plan involves a townhouse on Central Park West five or ten years down the line, then, sure, you might want to start padding your resumé. But if you’re pounding back Red Bulls and No-Doze on a nightly basis to get everything done — or having all your mail forwarded to the Cocktail Lounge — then you might want to reconsider some things.

And seniors: Don’t worry if an investment bank doesn’t come knocking at your door with a signing bonus right away — it’s probably because they’re too busy being indicted for securities fraud.