The gilded bust of Alexander the Great stands atop my armoire, gathering dust from the passage of time.

And similarly, cobwebs have begun to form in the nooks of my normally pristine visage. Crows have settled in the corners of my eyes and left the markings of their feet.

I feel the passage of time, the fall of the sand in the hourglass of life. Yes, readers, I am aging. I am withering, like a peony in a glass vessel.

I return my gaze to the esteem’d bust. Eskandar-e Maqduni, as he is known in the Persian lands, had lived but 33 years when he left this earth, at the height of his territorial acquisition — an empire spanning Greece, Egypt, and the entirety of Persia. His legions had conquered an area of tremendous breadth, a heretofore uncharted land of majestic splendor.

Wikipedia tells me that yesterday in 1598, Sir Francis Drake, at the tender age of 41, circumnavigated the globe, his ships sailing forth into the abyss with much fortitude, his fleet flying the glorious banner of the English Motherland.

Yet what do I, at the much-advanc’d age of 19, have to show for my years of experience? I have nothing to compare with these great men, these noble, neo-classical pillars holding aloft the entirety of the Western world.

I am but a drop in the proverbial bucket, as they say. Alas, alack and alay! Woe to the dire state of modern man, forced forever to sway with the pendulum of time. To quote Keats, “Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art.”

Would I were as steadfast as thou art, I would resolutely look to a grand and splendid future, fill’d with much rejoicing, and...an appropriate major.

Indecision fills me to the core: do I go the path of the wayward fuzzy, and triumphantly surge forth on a wave of a relatively easy course load, or do I “take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing, end them?” with a techie major?

With age comes indecision, and with indecision comes the burden of uncertainty. And I must choose wisely, for college is time in which one determines the course of the ship of life.

Perhaps many of you, as well, are in a similar predicament, at the crossroads of many different career paths and choices, at the height of undergraduate vacillation. In this unknowable barnyard that is life, we are but spiders on the same web, kindred.

Alexander surely knew at our age that he would a conqueror. And Drake surely knew he would grow to explore this world. But unlike these great men we daily waver between a Chinese major and a biology one.

This summer, I am left to watch as the polished and confident computer science majors tackle summer programming internships, the polisci enthusiasts take on archival research (for some reason), and the English majors...read things and take notes. In contrast, my fate is to wander the Chinese countryside looking for work, likely panhandling with sock puppets. But life will go on, and that helmsman at his post will pilot our ship to safety. Along the way, our ship shall be buffeted with the winds of hesitancy, but we shall choose our fate, and sail to where we are needed.

For those of you in a similar predicament, perhaps it is of some solace to once again look to the words of Keats — “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on.” Yes, dear pipes, ye mighty symbols of hidden vitality, guide us all to the correct major, and end what amounts to a tragic crisis indeed.

Nat is having a midlife crisis at 19. Email him with suggestions for how to ease his angst at nat.hillard@stanford.edu