Slow and steady wins the race.

Lately, my sanity has been crumbling to pieces often and with little provocation. The keening wails that shiver faintly through your bedroom window at night? The wispy shadow that drifts through Uni's halls, leaving a trail of mournful whispers? Direct your quivering finger of blame at me. These are the sounds of a high-strung student coming to terms with that swollen storm cloud of life: the future.

I was blind to my relative instability until I met Tavi Gevinson. By "met," I actually mean "pored over her every interview/news article/life detail in a totally friendly and non-creepy way." This borderline stalker behavior had begun innocently enough. At the time, I'd been holed up in my bedroom, engaged in a TED talk viewing rampage. I came across a video about female identity confusion titled "Still Figuring it Out." While the subject matter was nothing out of the ordinary, the speaker was an anomaly. Tavi was 16 when she gave the talk, and I equate teens in the world of TED with Einstein-esque child prodigies.

In an attempt to uncover a rational explanation for her presence on the TED stage, I googled her name and swiftly discovered that Tavi is, essentially, a goddess. The events leading up to her apotheosis are as follows: 1) she established a fashion blog, 2) the blog attained instant success, 3) she founded an online magazine, 4) this magazine reached god-like echelons of media prosperity, and inevitably, 5) Tavi began acting on Broadway. She has written for the New Yorker and the Chicago Tribune; she has interviewed Emma Watson, Aubrey Plaza, Lorde, and 20 other celebrities; she has been featured on The Colbert Report and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, in the New York Times and the BBC. She is 18.

At this point in my investigative adventure, an existential crisis of biblical proportions came crashing down on my sense of well-being--a merciless boot to my puny ant of happiness. Tavi is only one year older than I am, but she is light years ahead of me. In a world where the chilly waters of society's expectations are accelerating at break neck speeds, there is no room for hesitation. At times, I feel as though I've been left behind, sitting slumped on the shore with no sense of direction, watching my peers skim past me gleefully toward a golden sunset.

For the next hour, I proceeded, in a trance-like state of despair, to absorb every last piece of Tavi that I could glean from the internet. As I feverishly slogged through link after link, I felt the growing presence of time I had lost, time I had let slip from my fingers. Funny, though, how a sense of lost time flung me into a dark pit of distress, for it was this same sense of time that lifted me out again. When I saw how much time I'd spent anguishing over Tavi, incredulity replaced depression.

Tavi, I realized, is one incredible adolescent out of the billions of people in the world. Why should I waste my life obsessing over her success? She found her calling early on, but does that mean I won't find mine at all? Well, maybe I won't, but that doesn't mean I can't try.

The situation boils down to a girl who pursued a passion. This passion became the key to a room of locked doors. I will probably not be as famous as Tavi--I'd be surprised if I could even transcend my current state of near anonymity--but I can still be successful in my own way. I can still find my own passion, my own key, at my own pace. If I must lag one step behind everyone else and wait for the waters to calm beforehand, then so be it. I'd rather be alone on the shore than drowned in the river of life, even if I must suffer a breakdown or two in the process.

Give me non-vehicular transportation, or give me death.

Last week, my father and I went for a drive down a deserted country road. The scenery was so picturesque that our excursion would have made an exceptional opening sequence to a wholesome family movie. Imagine: the camera slowly focuses on a sea of corn rippling off into the horizon, complemented by an artfully arranged sunset peeking out from between the stalks. Cut to a shot of the parental unit inside the car. He's having a blast taking pictures of the landscape with his phone and excitedly gesturing at the scene outside. Then the camera pans to his daughter.

The strength of her grip on the steering wheel is akin to a boa constrictor's stranglehold on its prey. Her hands are clammy and white, but she's too busy staring straight ahead at the road to notice. Her eyes are glazed and feverish as they search for other cars. She thinks she hears a familiar voice, Hey, relax, you're doing fine, but she's forgetting to breathe and the lack of oxygen is making her dizzy. Sweat drips down her back, and...is that dribble running down her chin? Are those tears at the corners of her eyes? She doesn't care, though, because the adrenaline-oxygen deprivation combo is causing hallucinations. Dancing elephants and flashing lights flood her vision. At this point, she lets go of the wheel to embrace the light at the end of the tunnel. She says silent goodbyes to her loved ones.

Okay, I'm exaggerating. I'm not that terrified of driving, but I do have a confession to make: I don't want a driver's license [scandalized gasps commence in the distance]. I've had my permit for year, and I have only driven ten hours out of the mandatory fifty.

Before you judge me, let me describe the world's vehicular way of life as I see it. Drivers are strapped into metal death machines. They then choose to hurtle down roads in these metal death machines, inches away from other hurtling metal death machines, for the sake of transportation, even though biking or walking could accomplish the same goal.

I'm not saying I'm afraid of riding in cars, I'm saying that I'm afraid of controlling one. In my mind, a parent offering me car keys is analogous to Barack Obama handing me a big red button that activates his cache of atomic warheads. I can't handle the responsibility.

I still feel like a five year old, just beginning to puzzle out Barbie as Rapunzel in the backseat of my mother's minivan, incapable of captaining my own vessel. On top of my mental age, I'm currently in the midst of juggling college applications, school, standardized testing, extracurricular activities, and sanity. I don't feel in control of my own life. How could I possibly take control of a car, on a road, where anything could happen?

Yet, before my collegiate career begins, I need to have my license. I know that I will have to overcome my insecurities, that I need to take the wheel. It's hard to take my life, my transportation, into my own hands—it'd be so much easier to bike or walk—but I now realize that getting my license signifies more to me than my ability to drive independently. Once I get my license, I'll know that I trust myself.

Until then, I'll find inspiration in the concluding sentence of William Ernest Henley's "Invictus," and I will use it as a motivational mantra. It reads: "Once I am the master of my car, I am the captain of my soul"—or something along those lines.