The last few months before graduation
were perhaps the most stressful of my college career. It was not
because of the school work, I had developed a strategy for dealing
with insane amounts of work which involved a twenty-four ounce can of
Red Bull, an isolated room in the library, and a long stick for
poking anyone within a fifteen foot circumference who attempted to
approach me.
Rather, it was the terrifying prospect
of not having the comforting title of “college student” anymore.
When someone asked me what I was doing with my life I could respond
that I was going to school and the pressure was off, at least
partially. I could shrug off the other unpleasant questions like
“What are your plans for the future?” or “Where will you go for
graduate school?” because being in school implied that I would
figure it out along the way. I was in college and everyone knew that
going to college was the only way that you could get a job and make
money and be successful. The future? I couldn't be bothered to worry
about it, my Creative Writing degree would take care of that when the
time came.
Somewhere in my subconscious I must
have been aware of how utterly unprepared I was. This awareness
started to manifest itself in the final few months of my senior year.
I was extremely anxious and grew irritable whenever someone brought
up the topic of graduation. I entertained wild notions of
intentionally failing all my classes just so that I would be forced
to stay another semester and thereby buy myself a little more time to
figure things out.
Needless to say, I did not fail my
classes. I attended the Commencement ceremony and it was not until I
was sitting among row after row of black angular hats, sweating under
the synthetic fabric and fiddling with the program that I actually
felt excited about graduating. It wasn't any of the speeches at
graduation that inspired or moved me, but something one of my
professors had said to me in the final weeks as I sat in her office
feeling inept.
“You will never have more time than
you do right now.”
Although it didn't feel like it, I
knew that she was right. Having just graduated college with no
obligations to anyone but myself, no real job and no plans for the
future: I have all the time in the world.
