Why is my roommate moving to Ottawa? The reason is less practical than Biblical.

One day, from our house in Madison, Wis., he declared he was going on a quest with no more specific destination than a direction -- "up north." He drove away, like the messiah in a Mercury Villager, to wander the wilderness.

A few days later he sent me an e-mail (Hotmail as Hermes) describing how all was revealed to him: He had been camping out on the third-highest peak in Wisconsin, on the brink of sleep, when a vision came to him. It said, of course, he was to go to Ottawa.

At this point I imagine him lying in the back of his van, his eyes popping open. He sits up, flips to the back of the road atlas where Canada is kept hidden. Surrounded by darkness, he sees his future framed in the circle of his flashlight beam. He mouths Ottawa street names and green spaces, meaningless but surely significant and almost touching, awed like a heathen stirred for the first time by the gospel in a foreign tongue.

At first light he drove to his home in Hibbing, Minn., Moses descending from the mount, his commandments tucked in a Canadian map. And thus he began to research his destined home, and lo! -- it was good.

If only it was so easy for all of us recent college graduates. If only the vision we watch would bring us more than "American Idol" and "Dog Eat Dog." If only something or someone would validate the choices we make, or even better -- make the choices for us, make the tough call between Orlando and Ottawa.

That freedom to choose can be an invitation to failure, and no one is at more seductive liberty than the liberal arts major. Sometimes I wish my headlights, or a half-dead flashlight, would point me the way -- rather than the other way around.

But that's exactly the bright side to this darkness: I am in control and that is not a fact to fear. In recent weeks I've come to realize I should not and cannot live by my major or per my friends.

Any bachelor's degree, with its rigid specialization, can open an easy path to discontent. The logical next step can be the most illogical leap of faith. Computer science majors don't necessarily plunge into high-tech jobs. Biology majors don't always jump to med school. Art majors aren't doomed to managing at Walgreen's. And journalism majors sometimes choose not to become journalists.

Jittery freshmen and sophomores often tear their dreadlocks out worrying over what major to declare. When they do declare and are faced with the inevitable question "What are you going to do with that major?", they toss off casual reassurances like "I'm going to med school," or "I'm going into the field." They become convinced of their own sincerity. Suddenly they're tied to a track, branded with a Huxleyan stamp that predestines a station in life.

Yes, Huxley wrote A Brave New World and yes, it is a fiction, an illusion. Nothing is binding. A major is not a life sentence. Graduates should spend as much time -- if not more -- REVIEWING their choice in major as they did researching it in the first place.

The careful calculus that added up so obviously to the declaration of major X becomes erroneous when the initial conditions are altered. Now, more so than ever, it is paramount to review one's reasons for pursuing major X. Do reasons "a", "b", and "c" still apply? If, looking at them through eyes of hindsight and maturity, only reason "b" still applies, does major Y become a better fit? And if so, does pursuing the career that logically follows major X make any sense at all?

Indeed, this is second-guessing at its dubious best, but now's the time to do it. I am currently challenging those initial conditions, the assumptions about myself. It's better to second-guess now than to burn a few years of your life in a misery that ends only with the realization one day, on your 5,894th guess, that you should not have settled for the obvious path. In short, I'm trying not to let my expectations dictate. I try to expect nothing. I was discussing my future plans with a friend who just graduated from art school. When I told him I was thinking about living in my hometown for a half-year, he reacted alarmingly. He asked me, "If we went back to four years ago, and I told you that after graduation you'd be going back home, would you have believed me? I mean, are you surprised to be going home?"

I bristled at the question, sniffing an implication that my decision was a questionable one. I voiced this, and he replied that he meant no offense--it was just that most college graduates try to avoid moving back in with the parents, he pointed out. True, but that is the expectation, isn't it? What's the price we pay for living a life to expectation?

Another friend -- who graduated with me and spends his days counting brake components, traveling, and planning more traveling -- recently issued me an ultimatum. "If you don't spend a substantial amount of time abroad in the next couple years, I'll be very disappointed in you," he said to me.

This seemed an arrogant assumption of my needs, but he assured me his harsh words represented his care and affection. This friend wants me to "surprise myself sometimes." Maybe. But I'd rather stay true to myself and surprise my friends sometimes.

The post-undergraduate summer is life's hurricane season. All around me is a blur -- friends moving to Austin, New York, Chicago, Washington, moving to new jobs, moving in together, moving out, moving up, moving on. They're in the centrifuge, flying further and farther from me, the real world roaring at me, the swirling, whirling winds grabbing me like a siren's wail.

I remain calm in the storm's eye, but my heart races to a panic pace. With one little step I can be swept into the jet stream, sent spinning to some city in some job I may or may not like. A wrong step -- I'm off-balance, I fall, and my ass is on a number of the roulette wheel, and the world begins to spin.

Have you ever played The Legend of Zelda on Nintendo? You'd blow on a magic flute and a tornado would come, scoop you up, and plop you down at some random spot. That's something I cannot bring myself to do. I must stay in control. In my paranoid mind, I know I'll be placed by the magic whirlwind in some cubicle in Cooksville, and I'd eat at gas-station Subways, live above a Christian bookstore, hang out with the co-worker who collects plastic toys, spend weekends at bars with lights and people too clean and too bright, and spend evenings dreaming of surfing power lines, those like black rails above the setting sun, that spend their lives passing through and always leaving town.

I can live the dream now instead of dreaming later -- so I hesitate to step into the storm. I want to enjoy the stillness at the center for just a few moments more. I want to hear my heartbeat. I want time to think, to wake one day to understand something, quiet and important. I want to know my dream before it becomes a need.

A couple months ago, not long after I picked up my journalism degree, I had an interview with a major Midwestern newspaper. I had a nice time touring the nice facilities in a nice office building. I met nice people who do nice work, who told me it is nice to write and report for a nice newspaper in a nice-sized city. It was a nice time.

But the morning after my visit I woke up not to a sudden vision but a feeling dug too deep to cover over: My nice experience at the newspaper had not been exciting. My friends at the school paper would have given a limb for the chance to interview. In my position they would have been nervous prior to the interview, enthusiastic during it, and elated and anxious afterwards. The most I could feel was nice. The least I could feel was utter indifference.

My lack of emotional interest suggested to me that "nice" was not enough. Indeed, under the caress of existential bliss the delighted sigh is not one of "Life is nice"; no, it is said, with a lazy grin, LIFE IS GOOD. I am not going to settle for nice when good is out there and even better just beyond that.

And so then I decided I had to go there. That is my destiny and I am in control. I began to understand that majors cannot dictate a job search and friends cannot direct destinations. I began to realize journalism majors sometimes choose not to become journalists. English majors sometimes choose not to become teachers. Sometimes they go to Ottawa. The rest is hard to explain.