I am graduating in May.
This is a phrase I have repeated several (hundred) times, especially over the last few months. So many people have asked me, probably because they feel like they should and not because they actually care, “Are you excited?!”
What does this question really mean? Am I excited that I don’t have to worry about papers and studying anymore? Am I excited to not have to brave the cold Oswego winters anymore? Am I excited to have to start the terrifying process of finding a real job in a flailing economy in a business where I’ve been told multiple times that I “should” get my real estate license because “we’re not hiring” while constantly questioning my abilities and skills not only a person but also as a broadcaster? …You can probably tell I’m a bit anxious. I digress.
It’s time to move on, however. On my drive back up from Spring Break with my roommate/best friend/common law wife, we were talking about the excitement that comes with graduating. As we are two people who grew up with a great deal of privilege, our lives up until this point have been very planned out for us; school, more school, more school, college.
This is the first time in, at least our lives (and for many other millennials like us), that there is no definite step. Sure, “getting a job” is probably what we all aspire to and why we went to college in the first place, but there are no guarantees in life. It could take a while for us to reach that next step, or the step could be in a different direction than we anticipated, or as so many of us are afraid of, there could be no step whatsoever and we wind up on an uneven step we don’t want to be on and are settling because there are too many people already standing on the step we wanted to get to.
I think every human has had thoughts similar to mine; giving everything up to be a waitress in a small village in Italy (because I totally remember all those years of Italian from high school) sounds so much more appealing than a regular job. And in reality, I could do that. We could talk about “society” and “THE MAN!” putting these expectations on us to follow an exact path, but that’s a whole other article entirely.
Of course I will miss college; I made a lot of friends here and I do love the environment. I am extremely independent here and I know once the inevitable move back home happens, that will pretty much disappear. There is a great deal of “no parents, no rules” here, and having to re-adjust to having a curfew is going to, for lack of a better term, suck. My job and the extra curriculars I’m involved in will certainly be missed, but it’s obviously the people I will miss the most.
It’s time to grow up and use what I have learned in the past twenty one years, especially the last four, to be a grown up. The days of waking up at 11 and getting to decide my own work schedule and cramming a paper in last minute to beg a professor for mercy are gone. When I studied abroad in London, on our last day we were saying our goodbyes and most of us, myself included, were sobbing. In a private moment with one of my best friends Dan, in his ever Minnesota Mountain Man fashion, said “C’mon guys, you really thought this was going to last forever? We have to go back to real life.”
It’s time for real life. I know that my impending graduation is the beginning of what “adulthood” will mean for me, (I’m assuming a 401k, I have no idea what that is but I hear grown ups say that word a lot) and there is a lot of “excitement” that goes with that. For the first time, I get to see what life will hand me, rather than me telling it how things are going to go. Of course there have been the ups and downs and proverbial “curveballs,” but I’ve always had a definite idea of where my life would go next. I’ve prepared and worked for this moment and now it is time to use all of my experiences to get to that next step … whether that is in Italy or not.