I Don't Miss College

I don’t miss college.

And I thought I would. I really, really thought I would.

I began reluctantly counting down the days to college graduation well before Belmont had even announced a graduation date for December 2014. “Oh no, 365 days until I graduate! Oh shoot, 6.7 months until all is lost!” My final semester of Belmontonian life was characterized by those what-the-eff, head-spinning moments of realization that my time - not just in college, but within the education system that I’d been revolving my entire life around for the past 22 years - was coming to a close. A scary, who-knows-what’s-out-there, slam-the-door, no-going-back close.

It’s been almost four months since I graduated, and I can confidently claim I don’t miss college.

I was under the impression that college was “the best years of my life” and all remaining years thereafter were a haze of settled, uninterrupted routine – a job in a cubicle begrudgingly working 9 - 5 every day, eventually marriage, the blessing slash curse that is offspring, spending the following 18 years raising said kids, having said kids move back home because they majored in the liberal arts and now can’t find a job, retiring with a decent 401(k), maybe taking one of those riverboat cruises around Europe that retired couples take and then finally dying (surrounded by my loved ones and with an aged-yet-still-talented Harry Styles singing me into heaven). To me, life after graduation seemed rather dull. To me, life after graduation meant the best years of my life were over. Done. C’est finit!

I was wrong.

You know what constitutes the best years of your life? It’s choosing work that fulfills you, crafting a career path that forms to your passions, your purpose and your priorities. It’s meeting new people, making new friends and deepening your own self-awareness. It’s spending your time how you want to spend it, pursuing the projects and the adventures that your heart yearns for.

It’s buying a plane ticket to England for two weeks because why not. It’s sitting in a coffee shop on a Tuesday morning writing a blog post because right now, my schedule is flexible enough to allow me to sit in a coffee shop on a Tuesday morning writing a blog post. It’s eating noodles multiple nights a week because money is tight, but that’s okay, because the current freedom I have to travel and work toward the career that I really want outweighs the fact that my bank account is laughingly low.

College as the best years of our lives? Hardly. The best years of our lives are just getting started.

Featured

I've Been Writing: Lessons from Self-Publishing

“I’VE BEEN WRITING.”

I told a close friend this right as our Christmas break started. I had spent the last few days in coffee shops recuperating from the fall semester. And by “recuperating,” I mean hours on end were spent sipping coffee and writing poetry. My goal for the break was to be more disciplined in writing poems—stretch my poems in length, depth, symbolism, imagery... and stretch myself in the process.

This wasn’t a decision on a whim, though. (I mean, who just decides to dedicate their Christmas break to being disciplined in poetry?)

As I was finishing the semester, I got an email saying five poems I submitted to a print magazine had all been rejected.

A Millennial Learning From Gen Z

Miraculously, and I do not say that lightly, I was hired at my dream school as an adjunct professor.

Up until August of 2020, I had little to no interaction to the generation monikered Gen Z.

I let a few years lapse between undergrad and grad school and managed to only have night classes. Like I do with anyone of any age, I don’t judge them based off of assumptions and stereotypes.

That is until the night before I began teaching.

I couldn’t sleep as worries pummeled me: Did my outfit portray I’m cool but also professional? Do they even say “cool”? Will they listen to me? Will my examples relate?

To The In Between

I am writing to inform you that I have decided to accept your offer to stay here for a to-be-determined amount of time. I’ve decided to occupy the space that you’ve provided me with here because it seems I have no other choice. I’ve tried my hardest to get out of this space, to crawl and dive and roll my way out of this weird and uncomfortable living situation. This is worse than any bad roommate I’ve ever had, for the record. I’ve tried to avoid giving people this address when they ask “what are you doing with your life?” or “where are you now?” because I quite honestly haven’t bothered to memorize it either. Every time I think I’m moving out and I’ve convinced myself this is it, I fall right back on my ass and am reminded, abruptly (and painfully if I must say so myself), that it is not my time.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: 4 Tips to Overcome Post-Grad Regret

Just as you can imagine, college graduation season is packed with all the emotions. You feel relief, excitement, stress and pride. The emotion most people don’t associate with graduation and what I didn’t expect to feel, though, is regret.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Mountaintop Moments

Removed from the college bubble and re-planted in a new life, the field is wiped clean again. I have to again make a real, conscious decision about where I fit in and how I stack up. There seem to be metrics in place for who’s “winning” post-grad—high-power job? committed relationship? best apartment? coolest city?—but there’s no prize. New York is enormous, and social media is a daily tidal wave, and there have been days when I feel so small.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: A Letter to the Recent Grad

I 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.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: What to Expect When You're Expecting (to Graduate), Part I

It’s 7 pm. The white Christmas lights that are lined with postcards from my semester abroad and the ones that are wrapped around my headboard are twinkling against their respective walls. There are two kittens curled up on top of each other at the foot of my bed and I have set up camp in the chair that barricades me into my “reading corner.” I just finished a short story I was assigned in creative writing that dug its claws deep down into my writer’s soul and as I type a Bath and Body Works candle spits fumes of vanilla marshmallow out into the air.

I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave.

Make An Effort: 5 Things I Learned About Keeping Friendships After College

About a year ago, halfway through my senior year, one of my friends who had just graduated said, “Maintaining friendships in post grad life is hard, but it’s all about making an effort.”

I believed this at the time but I was still in denial that I wouldn’t be as close to my best friends as I was in college. How could everything change so quickly? Would all of the effort we had put into these friendships these past four years just go to waste?

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Learning to Be

The amount that I miss college has grown vast and visceral these days. The new school year started on the same day that I started my job, and it felt wrong to be running to catch the subway when I should have been running to class. I don’t have my friends around to ground me, to remind me of our four-year and forever home. I used to find God at nighttime Mass, on service trips, in philosophy discussions; without those elements at my fingertips, I’m restless. My nostalgia is beyond what can be prettified by an Instagram filter; it’s heavy, and lonely, and I have felt inexplicably and irrationally isolated in bearing its weight.

GraduationAlly WillisApril 12, 2015Featured, ArchiveComment

I Don't Miss College

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