Graduated.
Home again, whatever that means.
College is over, summer is underway, and a lot of people are taking stock of a lot of things in their young lives. School. Maybe finding a new one. Finishing up that final year. Work and avoiding it as best we can. Hoping that paychecks will be bigger than they are. Friends. Those now distant professors. Vacations. Finding our favorite air-conditioned room. Living with our parents. How to move out as soon as possible, even in spite of what our bank accounts might say.
It’s an easily denied transition– summer is summer is summer for most of us, but the prospect of summer not ending with that drive back to school, the anxiety over the first grade of the semester, the first weekend back with college friends is unsettling and a little disappointing. Our routines have been disrupted and those of us who find drastic change unpleasant may be finding ourselves rather displeased. I think even those of us who are excited to get moving, get away from the undergrad life, are still hesitant in some ways to make the break, start using a personal email address instead of that .edu one.
Sometimes it seems as though we’re assured that every step in the life process is going to be the best years of our lives, the beginning of a new era, something to reminisce about. And sure, that’s possible. Why can’t every year of your life be an improvement– different, exciting, a new sort of fulfilling? That sounds great, but a sound isn’t a sight, so who knows what’s headed towards us?
And we’re a cynical bunch, this recently graduated class of college students, though I’m sometimes impressed by (occasionally jealous of) the things people are doing… Or at least impressed by the people who have figured out what they want to do for the next few months of their lives. All this seems to leave us in the emotional lurch, wondering what to do, where to go, who to take it all in with. Most of my professors this last semester weren’t particularly optimistic on our behalf either.
“It’s a tough time to be graduating,” most of them say.
“Good fucking luck.”
So it looks bad, but who wants a 9-5 anyway?
Though as they say on The Wire, “It ain’t about right and wrong. It’s about the money.” …ok, so there isn’t necessarily a moral dilemma here, but we do need jobs, even if they suck.
In any case, for me, the break with academia that comes with graduation is an ugly one, but now we can fill our time with the books we always wanted to read, the magazines we never had time for, the movies that couldn’t be justified during the busy nights of the school year. I’ve gotten through a few books already, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and The Gospel According to Jesus Christ to start with, and it feels good. Every day can be a day at a Montessori school.
And so it goes.
