Over Easter break, the PGA Masters Tournament played nonstop in my house, much to the dismay of my sister and I, who decided to boycott the event after the all-male country club denied IBM CEO Ginni Rometty a membership because she is a woman. But when the entire family clustered around the TV after dinner on Sunday to watch Bubba Watson slip into his green champion’s jacket, we were more or less forced to pay attention.

I’d heard the hot-headed Texas native is a bit of a maverick amongst the rest of the PGA players. Watson, who has voiced concern over Augusta’s sexist rules, has no coach or experience in formal lessons, doesn’t own a suit and plays “Bubba Golf,” which hinges on unorthodoxy and long shots.

In a recent interview, he revealed that he’s always dreamed of earning a Masters championship, but “never made the (winning) putt” in his subconscious.

For an optimist, the possibility of failure can be just as compelling as the chance of success.

“If I have a swing,” Watson’s said, “I have a shot.”

I admire that attitude, but college has made me too rigid to adopt it as my own. I’ve committed myself to an all-or-nothing mindset: I can either pen award-winning novels in Brooklyn post-graduation or bus tables at my hometown’s Ihop. Success has become a black-and-white product of an unvarying formula for me: work, try, sweat, work, bleed, cry, work, rinse, repeat. I’ve pointedly stopped talking about my dreams for fear of becoming a stereotypical romanticizing humanities major.

And to no avail. I still sound like a dreamer compared to my classmates who’ve had jobs secured since Thanksgiving. After years of planning and soul-searching, I can still only offer vague ideas to professors and relatives who ask about my post-grad plans.

The point isn’t to stop asking about the future. My bosses need to know what kind of work they’re prepping me for, just like my friends need to know where they can send my snail mail. My parents, most of all, deserve to know what this outrageous investment of theirs will amount to.

But when the nuts and bolts are stripped from the post-grad question, what’s left to talk about? Should our dreams factor into our future plans, or are they strictly part of the cerebral college culture?

At 21, I’ve accepted that my dreams make better exercises for my imagination than blueprints for my life. I’m more likely to be struck by lightning twice than run the White House — I get it. But the process of dreaming is still valuable, regardless of whether the dreams come true.

Dreams free us up for possibilities and give us much-needed footing. As writer Mary Schmich explains, “The larger dreams — to find expression, connection, meaning — are like sturdy suitcases. They get battered on the long trip, but they don’t fall apart.”

Part of the pain of graduating is the call to wake up from our dreams just as they were getting good. Senior year is when every aspect of academia comes together and the possibilities seem infinite. But we can’t get too excited. The real world, we’re reminded, has enough wishful thinkers.

No matter how beautiful our resumes, we’re not ready to be part of the real world if we’re not excited about the absence of plans and the possibility of failing. Dreams will fall to the wayside, and not every “X” will mark the spot, but the point of dreaming is to see a shot in every swing and have some faith in a planet teeming with pessimists. We don’t have to aim for winning shots or corner offices; maybe playing on courses where we don’t like the rules and someday rewriting them is enough. Maybe a vision for the fairway is better than a perfect final putt.