As I wrote yesterday, I have asked job applicants to write guest posts for this blog as part of their application process. Today I offer one of those posts to you. The author is Jonah Cohen, a senior at Brandeis University double majoring in Philosophy and Psychology who has made Dean’s List every semester. (I tried to tell him college is for having fun but I had as much success explaining this to him as I did to my own mother when I was in college.) Without further adieu, here is his post:

I am graduating in three months. And I need to write a blog post. I have no idea what I will be doing next year, nor have I ever written a blog. That is about all I know.

Are you familiar with this feeling of utter uncertainty? Do you like to always know what is about to happen? Do you need to know what’s around the corner?

But what if you don’t know? Or couldn’t know? What do you typically do then?

Kierkegaard wrote, “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily, to not to dare is to lose oneself.”

Most of the time we let the uncertainty in our lives stop us. It is romantic to fill our lives with pleasing illusions; armed with a plan, the world looks a lot less scary. We feel safer, less alone, and further from the nasty thought that we might screw up or get lost. But this is a mistake.

The unknown is motivating. It pushes us to try new things. To explore different options. And the paradox?

Only by immersing ourselves in the frightening unexplored can we rise to our greatest challenges.

So push yourself into the unknown.

Doing this has allowed me to do things that I have never done before.

Like writing this blog post.