I may be late to the game, but I finally binged all of “Gilmore Girls”. It took me the majority of my senior year to finish, but I am officially a Lorelai and Rory stan!
While Rory Gilmore’s romantic choices are oftentimes questionable, her work ethic and intelligence are what I’ll try to focus on here. Her time at Yale provided a lot of teachable moments to me, a nervous senior trying to find a job outside of the sheltered bubble of university life.
Here’s what I learned in 7 seasons from the lead of a 2000’s TV series:
- The value of writing!
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As an English Language and Literature minor and the current President and Campus Correspondent of Her Campus Waterloo, I obviously enjoy writing. Like many avid writers, high school English class is what sparked my interest and got me going. I was lucky to have teachers who believed in my creativity and confronted my excessive use of commas in the early stages to make me the writer I am today. I am still a huge fan of using the Oxford comma though; don’t even try to argue with me, it is essential punctuation!
Watching Rory write for the Chilton paper and then Yale Daily News was a huge motivator for me. Her passion for deadlines, editing, and providing the public with something meaningful to read has kept my interest in journalism thriving throughout a long and tiresome (yet rewarding) degree full of academic writing. I’m just going to disregard the end of the series where she can’t find a job and keeps getting turned away from papers across the U.S. After all, she is just a fictional character ….
- That family is… cool.
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Many university students experience a change in relationships with their family as they head off into the great big world of higher education. It’s a strange transition from living in such close quarters to having to update each other at major holidays. It has definitely taken me time to realize this and put it into action, but I am so thankful to have a family that constantly checks up on me at school and supports my, often intense, academic endeavours.
Rory constantly called Lorelai when she was stressed about school, boys, or attending Friday night dinners with the Gilmores. They were an inseparable duo throughout the entire series, even when actual distance was put between them.
- To acknowledge your accomplishments for all they are!
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Perhaps the wow-ness of being accepted into an Ivy League school wore off on Rory, but I think completing higher education is something to blab about. Not everyone is lucky enough to attend university, let alone thrive at a top American school (minus the yacht-theft incident), so I think Rory’s university graduation is a huge win!
As a university senior myself, I am constantly updating my resume and LinkedIn profile (definitely connect with me!) and have recently enjoyed revisiting all that I have accomplished over the past 4 years. This is an obvious brag, but I’m okay with it. I worked really hard and am proud of all I was able to accomplish as an individual collegiate on such a large campus.
- The temporality of things, like life!
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Rory often found herself surrounded by change — Lane having twins, Paris and Doyle’s relationship, the constant shenanigans of her extravagant grandparents — all while experiencing huge life transitions herself. Transitioning from high school to university to the workplace is a LOT and Rory caught on that life moves fast, so you just have to try to keep up.
For me, the lesson is dual-ended. Life is so precious and we only have one; it’s sacred.
But also, nothing (especially the bad parts) lasts forever. Whether in a slump with Logan or bummed about a fellowship, Rory demonstrates the mentality of onwards and upwards, because life is so temporary. - That almost everything can be solved with a cup of coffee!
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While I’ve tried to switch to decaf, I can still relate to the Gilmore Girls’ obsession with caffeine. An essential aspect of undergrad is finding the perfect caffeine dosage that gives you the rush without the jitters and mid-day crash. For me, a matcha latte with oat milk is the perfect poison!
I’m not too sure how I feel about the “Year in a Life” reboot. But nonetheless, Rory Gilmore is a great TV character (IMO) and I had a blast watching the show as a soon-to-be graduate. While I won’t be putting Yale University on my resume, I am incredibly proud to be a University of Waterloo student and a senior who was able to watch 7 seasons of a show on Netflix while staying on the Honour Roll.
