Actuality

Up until the age of 22, the lives of people of our generation follow a pretty structured plan. Junior year of High school you pick out colleges, and you wait patiently the following Spring for responses. Once you pick one, it’s time to celebrate graduating high school. Then it’s off to adjust to life as a sort-of adult for the next four years of fun! And by that I mean partying and studying. But then, somewhere around October of Senior year a horrible feeling of dread sets in: There is no next phase of the plan. No next step that you’re expected to take along with the masses. You have to start piloting your own life, and what’s worse is you have to do it all by yourself.

The funny this is, our society is sort of responsible for letting this feeling of total panic bitch slap us across the face. We spend out entire upbringing watching shows like Friends where people with college degrees sit around in trendy apartments and sip coffee while talking about their off-beat, cool jobs. But I digress. When I personally first realized that purposely failing all of my Spring semester classes wasn’t an option, I started to have what can only be described as a small nervous breakdown. I had so much I wanted to do, but I wasn’t sure what the right path would be. As a foreign language major, would it be more beneficial for me to teach abroad for a year or go to grad school? Would I want to move home? What about all my friends? There were suddenly all these questions and seemingly no right answers. Life at my large Mid-Atlantic University was slowly slipping away, and life as an adult was fast approaching.

This was also around the time that people around me started asking the question that scares and frustrates the crap out of almost all recent or soon-to-be grads: “So…what are you plans after graduation?” Now, don’t get me wrong, the first few times are innocent enough. But by the time your 3rd cousin once removed is posing once again at Easter dinner, the only thing you want to do is scream “I HAVE NO IDEA. CAN’T EVERYONE JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!?!?!?”

And this, fellow Post-grads, is why I’m here: to chronicle the ups and downs of a recent grad who’s throwing herself into the uncharted waters of the real world for the first time. 

So, if you’re up the same creek as me feel free to read along. I can’t promise you’ll always be on the edge of your seat, but I can promise no sugarcoating and no fluff. Just straight to the point stories and opinions about the life of a college grad, in actuality.