So having graduated from college a little over two weeks ago, I have also managed to survive my first week at my first post-college job. YAY!
Yay!!! I get to start paying back my loans now! Wheeee!!!! -__-
It still feels very surreal. I honestly don’t think it will hit me that I am done with college until school starts back up and my friends who still have a few quarters left before they graduate are back in class and I’m not. In all honesty, I would not be surprised if I have developed Stockholm’s syndrome for my school’s library. But whatever, I’ll just deal with whatever college withdrawals as they come.
But yeah! I’m a real adult! Not like I haven’t technically been a “real adult” since I turned 18 when it legally official but being legally viewed as an adult is totally different from feeling like an adult. I was trying to explain it to a friend and the best way I can describe graduating is feeling like your 4-year overnight camp just ended, bursting the college bubble dream (or I guess you can say nightmare depending on how you’d want to look at it) and sending you back to reality where everything before felt like a dream.
Though I am lucky/blessed to have a job for the next year – something that not that many college grads can always say – I would be lying to the moon and back if I said I wasn’t shaking with anxiety and fear of failure, not only with my job but the always dreaded “next steps for the future”. To be honest, I’m not really sure about anything at this point. Of course, I have vague ideas of what I might do after I finish this job but nothing is definite yet and that lack of control is terrifying.
However, instead of focusing on all of my anxieties I’ve been trying to focus on some of the positive things of post-college life. Like I said earlier, I just successfully finished my first week at my new job. It’s a really great job and my boss has been super awesome and super invested in making sure I understand what her role is in regards to education and what our department does; not just to help me help her but to also have a better idea of child development and public policy in education on a large scale.I have also finished not one, not two, but three books for pleasure – all guilty pleasures: Uprooted, Attachments, and Austenland. I am somewhat happy to say that none of these books had anything to do with the theories of Marx, Durkheim, or some other “life of the mind” author that the students at my college threw around in almost day to day conversations like pennies at a wishing fountain. And my sleep schedule is (somewhat) more consistent…(somewhat).
Overall, I hope this will be a time to grow more in understanding and confidence of myself and my faith in this time of changing environments, people, and circumstances. I think in all honesty, the only thing that’s stopping me from being a total nervous wreck with all the changes in my life have been encouragement from faimly, friends, and lyrics such as from The Liturgists’ song, Vapor (which is based on the teaching from the book of Ecclesiastes) that remind me that embody the phrase that “this too shall pass”:
“Oh the vapor of it all
It’s a chasing of the wind
The powers of the earth so pale and thin
We will set our hearts on you again”
It’s kind of disorientating sitting at the grown-ups’ table but in a kind of “Woo-hoo! Bring on the next adventure!” sort of way. As always though, only time will tell. Here’s to many more survived weeks.
I swear, I know how to be an adult…kind of…
Sit and Be Still 