My last college deadline was to be completely packed up and checked out of my on-campus townhouse by 4 pm on graduation day. Yes, after the nervous excitement of placing my cap just-so, figuring out how the mysterious hood was supposed to sit uncomfortably around my neck, waiting to be called to claim my diploma, successfully navigating my way across the stage without falling, and after waiting through another speech and another send-off, I had to rush back to my room and leave my four-year home in two short hours.
Read MoreI wasn’t prepared for the high-speed film reel of memories to hit me the second we drove off the 405 onto the 101 highway.
Two hours of driving through my tears on the day I said goodbye to a boy my brain had grown accustomed to telling “I love you,” when my heart just wasn’t there yet. An entire CD of Lady Antebellum Christmas songs my sister and I played on repeat on our way home for winter break. A 40-mile trek with three girls who shared my apartment and the label “best friend” just to walk into a Target.
Read MoreNew things, better things.
That’s been a go-to phrase for me for the past several months, a reminder in a rather transition-heavy and emotionally-turbulent time in my life to keep my eyes set on the good things to come rather than the worries I usually burden myself with needlessly.
And in the spirit of new things, better things comes along That First Year getting a makeover.
Read MoreGraduation day is over. My dorm room is packed up. I have said goodbye to my best friends, the ones for whom “goodbye” doesn’t really ever apply, even if I’m not sure when I’ll see them again. I am in the backseat of the car and I have cried myself into a nap; when I wake up, my parents are pulling into the parking lot of our favorite deli off the highway. We sit at a table in back, order soda and sandwiches and even dessert. As we talk, I become once more hyper-aware that something in my life has undergone a seismic shift. I am going home, but I am not in college anymore, so I don’t yet know what “home” means.
Read MoreI saw the finish line. It was close. I never thought I would make it but there I was: six weeks from wearing that awkward too-small cap and oversized gown. I was pages away from closing the book yet with the strongest desire to call it quits and throw it away.
I felt lost. I was anxious and ready to move somewhere new and exciting. I was ready to walk away from everything I worked to build and everything I chased after just for something new. I wasn’t secure in myself, where I was going in life, or the standing I held with the people around me.
Read MoreWhen I graduated last spring, I was a complete jumble of emotions. I was more than ready to be done with school but nowhere close to being prepared for the real world. I didn’t have a job lined up as I had hoped and my near-future seemed seriously bleak. Not to mention it was 90 degrees and my hair was just not cooperating, so of course the irritability ensued.
Read MoreI took graduating really hard. Like, really hard. I left school having absolutely nothing figured out with absolutely no answers, and spent most of the summer crying to my parents and denying the fact that I could no longer get dollar drinks at the bar (one of the rudest awakenings about post-grad life…). I felt lost without my friends, without the walls of UNH that protected us all so neatly, and without my identity as a student.
…because if I wasn't a student, then who the $%&@# was I?!?!?
Read MoreThings are changing. Not just the usual kind of change, where you finish one thing and move onto the next and then panic and cry like millions of other kids, excuse me—young adults, my age. I'm sure you get that one a lot. The "help me, I'm jobless" one. And I'm sure you do your best, don't get me wrong, but while we're on the subject, how in the world does a kid who spent all of his senior year of high school dressed as the Statue of Liberty and speaking in a mildly offensive German accent get scouted by Google and offered a company car, YouDammit?
Read MoreThe truth is, I’m struggling and I’m a little lost right now. I don’t have a magic solution to make myself feel better, to make my bank account multiply, to magically gain five years of work experience in a day.
But I’m not the only one. Neither are you if you feel the same. It’s a strange time in life and it’s perfectly normal to have no idea what you’re doing and to cry and feel discouraged when things don’t go as you hoped. What matters is that you don’t give up. I had an interview this week that went terribly. I walked out feeling like a failure and never wanting to do another interview again. But I biked home, had a cup of tea with my roommate and went right back on my computer to apply for more jobs.
Read MoreIt will be okay, it will be okay, it will be okay.
As I lie in bed, wrapped in the safety of my blanket burrito, I religiously repeat these four words in my head like a nightly prayer. It’s my Hail Mary attempt to silence the 1001 future what-if scenarios racing through my mind.
What if I don’t find a job that I love? What if I have to go back to school? What if I have to live under my mother’s roof until I’m 30? What if I just pack up my bags and go?
What if? What if? What if?
Read More11 reasons you should definitely read this book
Read MoreI didn’t necessarily expect the whole “adult” thing to be easy, but I also didn’t expect it to overwhelm me the way it did. Granted, I was also in a long-distance relationship that was quickly tanking, so that definitely didn’t help me navigate life in the aftermath of graduating. Along with having roommates with very different personalities than mine who brought a tense atmosphere to my home life, post-grad life dropped a whole new concept into my path: being intentional.
Graduating from college changes who you are—one moment you’re a student like you’ve always been, and the next moment you find that your identity has shifted. For me, the combination of a failing relationship, an uncomfortable home life and the loss of the built-in college community I’d had for 3.5 years made for a whirlwind season of life. If you’re not careful, all of a sudden you realize you haven’t seen your friends in two months and Netflix keeps asking you if you’re still watching your show because you fall asleep on the couch every night.
Read MoreBecause I’m still not over the fact that a new year has already fallen upon us (and I’m also not over the fact that it’s been almost a year since we graduated… NO), I still can’t help but reflect on 2015 out of the pure shock that it’s behind us now. What a major year this was for me: I (somehow) graduated college, moved into an apartment, got a big-girl job and experienced infinite laughs, loves, let-downs and lessons. So like every other year before this one, I found myself mentally making a list of all of the things I wanted to change about myself after the ball dropped. Past resolutions include eating healthier, exercising more, volunteering more, everything you've already heard before and everything I never actually do, etc.
But then I started wondering; if I could go back, to 2015 or 2014 or 2011 or 2006, what would I tell myself then?
In the end, would I have done it any different?
So I decided to put my senior-year newspaper class experience to the test and use my hard-hitting journalism skills (just pretend…) to ask the same question to those around me: What would you tell your past self?
Read More1. After a hard day, there’s nothing better than lighting a fancy candle and taking a hot bath. Indulge in a little luxury.
2. Assume that everyone in your yoga class feels just as vulnerable as you do.
3. Keep going to yoga. (Or your chosen equivalent.)
4. If you want something badly, tell someone about it. Your best friend, your mom, the cashier at the grocery store. You’ll be ten times more likely to reach for that goal if someone else is quietly rooting for you. Bonus points if that someone calls you out on your excuses.
Read MoreOne time in a counseling session, somewhere deep in the trenches of an emotionally unruly summer, I was hating on fear. I was going on and on about the need I felt to uproot it from my life and unchain the extra bondage that I thought it wrapped around my ankles. Fear is ugly. Fear is seemingly chastised by God. Fear is the gateway drug to weakness and complacency and always having your parachute strapped on but never jumping out of the plane. Fear is the enemy.
When I finally let up my counselor posed this question—“Do you want a pilot who is afraid or unafraid?” I immediately understood and hated the metaphor. I knew she wanted me to say afraid. She was cradling fear after the blows I had just inflicted on it and attempting to offer me a picture that would convince me to be kinder to it.
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