This isn’t a warm-up year before real life. It already counts, which means it’s already yours.

Treating the present as preparation puts your own life permanently in the future. Nothing starts later, and the hours you are living now are the same material as the ones you imagine beginning after graduation. The upside of it already counting is that it is already yours to steer.

Pick one thing this month you would do if this were real life, then do it now. Waiting for the official start is how people lose a decade.