If you’re reading this right now, chances are you’re not dead. For several years now, those darn Mayans have kept us on our toes thinking the world as we know it would end on Dec. 21. Well, if that were the case, most of us would have lived our whole lives in school or working our butts off – with no time to travel the world, jump out of an airplane, become a superhero or any of those other cliché bullet points. You’d think they couldn’t given us a few more years to cross a few items off our bucket-lists.

And we all panicked as if it were really something to freak out about. When I first heard about it, I started thinking about what my life was like at that point. I fast-forwarded about five years and thought, “Really? After my first semester of college? Really?”

And everyone in my high school class thought the same. We would all be 18 or 19, and our lives would be over before any of us could legally buy a beer or gamble the last crumbled up $5 bill in our pockets.

For months I thought about this, thinking I might be thousands of feet underground or inside a bursting volcano – or however we were all supposed to die. Yet, as doomsday approached, I was nonchalant.

It’s not that I didn’t care; I just didn’t exactly believe it. I don’t think many of us did. After all, haven’t there been several predictions like this? If we honestly thought the world were ending, would we all be registering for classes, complaining about how expensive gas is and listening to Adele as we think of our ex-lovers?

By the way, why did the Maya have to pick the 21st? Couldn’t they also predict that we would all celebrate Christmas and New Year’s one day? I think all of us at least wanted to live through the holiday season. I mean, that’s one less party we’d live for, one less present we’d get, one last chocolate soufflé and piece of ham we’d eat. That prediction was just plain mean.

If you’ve read to this point, congratulations, you’re alive. You’re not underground, inside a volcano or in your grave. And for all of you believers, I’m glad you were wrong. I really wanted to live past my 18 years of life, and you’ll probably have to admit that you did, too.

Plus, it would have been especially ironic if I had wasted the last precious moments of my life researching this piece of writing and studying for finals instead of prepping for the end of the world as the 21st was fast approaching.

If we’ve learned anything from these dire predictions, maybe it’s to hold on tightly to those close to us, ‘cause the world could end any time. But for now, looking back from the beginning of a new year, let’s just have a good laugh about all of this.