One Year Out

Graduation was a year ago this weekend, in honor of the momentous occasion I offer you some thoughts:

The oft-mentioned “real world” is a hoax. During the past year I have come into contact with many people who occupy this mystery place; people who have worked at my job longer then I have and have been thinking about their health insurance for years, but for the most part, we newly graduated masses continue to look at the world through our collegiate lens. University life is still our paradigm. When I’m hanging out with my older friends I often catch myself referencing college life and feeling silly, young, inexperienced, nostalgic? We recent graduates reminisce about our hours logged in the library and pine for the place we learned to call home while shyly examining the world around us. (Note: working at a University during your first post-graduation year may intensify feelings of confusion about where the University life ends and real life begins.)

Exploring is challenging. After graduation I realized that there were so many parts of Cornell and Ithaca that I had just touched on, or had taken a really long time to find (ex. Walking down the Cascadilla gorge and following it along the creek to Gimme! Coffee). I thought that by moving to South Dakota everything would be an adventure, but I’ve found that I need to be vigilant and not just sit at home watching TV and chatting on the phone. I’ve refined what I think of as exploring, including hanging out with new people, biking around new places and doing things when I want to even if I don’t have someone to do them with. I think I can always do better, but I’ve been working at it and hope that exploration doesn’t one day take a back seat to constant office work.

Writing when you’re not in school is hard. I miss thinking new things and communicating them in an interesting way. Emails, blog entries and press releases are not the same as academic papers. Sometimes when a smart word like “conceptualize” sneaks into my conversation (as in: Liz Lemon radically re-conceptualizes comedy) I get pangs and want to lock myself in a library and come home hopped up and chatting to my roommates about all my ideas. That said, I am not quite ready to head back to school yet. But look out, this blog ain’t slowing down anytime soon!