Hey guys, it’s been a while.
Mid-January I was made aware of the
opportunity to graduate with honors (something I didn’t think I could do), and
since I only had to contract 2 more courses for honors in order to achieve
this, I decided it would be a manageable and worthwhile pursuit. As fate would
have it, things were a bit more complicated than that. For my honors contracted courses, I ended up
doing, in total, about 7-8 extra assignments between my honors courses (3 of
them large projects/papers) and I also had to write an honors thesis, expanding
a paper from a previous course to 10 pages and then presenting my thesis in
front of the faculty for my department. On top of all that, on my honors
graduation application, my cumulative GPA was about .03 short of what it needed
to be in order to graduate with honors, and in order to bring it up, my
semester GPA had to be about a 3.7. Additionally, I still had to manage leading
a student org, engaging with my intentional community, working, volunteering,
and (fragments of) a social life. [/excuses]
Sorry I didn’t have time to write, I hardly had time to
sleep.
All ended well enough, though. I graduated with a medallion
around my neck and a semester GPA of 3.9! And now I’m done. Forever.
.JPG)
Yay?
Sooo… yeah. Here I am. A grown up. Living jobless in my
parent’s house. Writing a blog post.
Ok, so I just graduated. 3(ish?) weeks ago. By all reports,
most people don’t have until several months after graduation. I definitely
should not feel like a loser. I
graduated with honors! I’ve had 2 internships and I do a lot of volunteering!
I’m a hard worker!
But the fact remains: I do feel kind of like a loser. Up at
school, I was told time and time again not to have a gap in my resume. And a
few weeks isn’t really a gap... I’ve spent some of this time exploring different
Pro Bono volunteering opportunities to keep me sharp while I look for a job.
Every second I’m not employed or doing something productive with the skills
I’ve spent the past four years developing feels like I’m wasting precious time
in a job opportunity hourglass that’s about to run out. I know that’s not true.
Everyone knows that’s not true.
There’s just so much uncertainty in my life now. For the
first time in my entire life, I have no idea where I’ll be this September. I
could be exactly where I want to be: in a full-time, degree-utilizing job in
West Michigan. I could be thousands of miles away doing PR in New York or
somewhere completely unexpected like Kansas City or something. Or I could be an
unemployed 21 year old living with her parents. As someone who hates risks and
uncertainty, this makes me super uncomfortable.
And I guess uncertainty in my future makes me feel like a
loser? That doesn’t make much sense when you break it down.
I think part of my problem is that I’m going about this the
wrong way. You know, for the first time since I can remember, my summer is
completely free. I’m not working, I don’t have any school obligations; I’m
completely free. I’m a 21-year old and I have a car: I can do whatever I want.
As an adult, it’s time to stop seeing the future as a risk and start seeing it
as an opportunity. I need to stop limiting myself, I need to take risks. If I
don’t explore, if I don’t take risks, if I don’t even apply for jobs halfway
across the country because I’m too afraid of what might happen, I’ll end up the
same place I’ve always been.
So here goes. I’ll start small, but it’s time to stop tying
myself down with fear of the unknown, and time to start embracing a world of
possibility.
