There’s not much I remember about this year of my life. I remember sleeping a majority of the time, and crying almost all of the time I was awake. I remember having to run out of classes and meetings because I was crying and painfully anxious and I remember being holed up in my dorm room, literally fearful to open the door and exit the space. I thought I had known Rock Bottom from previous years and experiences. But this was it: the lowest I had ever known.
Read MoreI’m very quickly overcome with the urge to see it all. I begin to fret over all of the things I’ve likely missed—glances exchanged between strangers or friends, the Grand Canyon could have been even more breathtaking, the intricacies of veined leaves on trees, paths I should have taken, missed moments where I could have made an impact.
I wonder how often we miss things or take things for granted and how much of a difference approaching each day with a fresh lens could make? I wonder also why I hadn’t made this decision sooner?
Read MoreTwo over-sized suitcases are packed full of my belongings, and I am ready to move across the world. This Texas girl is flying off to live in the suburbs of London. Indefinitely. I will be continuing my teaching career at a British school, teaching "maths."
Three phrases I have spoken on repeat since accepting my new job are as follows:
"This is the craziest thing I have ever done." (Obviously.)
"I'll be back." (Not in a Schwarzenegger accent, but you get the idea.)
"I'm such a Millennial." (Just the truth.)
Read More“I’m going to therapy.” When that statement was first true for me, the sentence felt slippery, like I couldn’t quite wrap my hands around it, like trying to hold one of those weird liquid-filled sparkly gel blobs we played with as kids (really, what were those?). Or like trying to roll those Spanish “r”s or pronounce those deep-throated “e”s like the French do—it sounded unnatural when I tried to say it. So instead, I said “I’m going to see Sarah” or “I have an appointment” or, mostly, I just don’t say anything at all, keeping it tucked away in my I’d-rather-not-say collection.
Read MoreLast May I graduated college with a student loan balance of $29,000. Being an individual who was always mindful of my spending, this number was daunting. I had never even left a balance on my credit card.
Yet, I could still find relief in knowing that I was below the national average. 2017 graduates average nearly $40,000 in student loan debt. The United States altogether holds $1.48 Trillion in student loan debt. Talk about monstrous. And honestly, I don’t see it declining in the near future.
Even though $29,000 seemed immense, I knew that if I made smart decisions and planned accordingly I could make it work. Fast forward to June of 2018 and I’m officially free of student loan debt.
With graduates taking on increasingly more debt each year, I thought I’d share my story.
Read MoreTwenty-three has been the hardest year of my life, straight up. And I say that with zero melodrama and with the common sense that there will be years ahead that are worse and years ahead that are better. I know many of you can relate. Maybe this is just our early twenties, or maybe this is just life—this pendulum swinging between the dark and light, wandering and arriving, wondering and knowing, grief and joy.
Read MoreI remember coming home from college that summer. My hands were shaking and my laundry was dirty and I echoed with emptiness. An emptiness that was so expansive I wasn’t sure if I would ever feel full again.
I was finally realizing what everyone else had been trying to tell me; something was wrong. I was fading fast, and it wasn’t normal; this anxiety and need to control everything from my breakfast to what the person in front of me was thinking.
Read MoreAs I said in my previous post—How to Travel on a Post-Grad Budget, Part 1—it is 180,000% possible to travel on a post-grad budget, and I will continue to defend this statement in a manner that is borderline aggressive.
Here are 4 more tips to help you save while traveling.
Read MoreMaking the most of loneliness means not nursing the discomfort of emptiness but creatively discovering new ways to fill it. Singleness may not always naturally fill our time or our hearts, but there is plenty of fullness to be experienced if we only choose to fill the space with, well, whatever the heck we want.
Read MoreIt is 180,000% possible to travel on a post-grad budget, and I will defend this statement in a manner that is borderline aggressive.
The world wasn’t meant to be admired from a stock desktop wallpaper; it was meant to be experienced. This is another statement that I will defend in a manner that is borderline aggressive.
But traveling isn’t always easy on entry-level wages. Here’s how to see the world without breaking the bank.
Read MoreThe world of swipes and texting and endless first dates can be pretty bleak when you’re one of the few souls looking for a "real connection." Hookup culture could be blamed for some of this, but I find so many people, myself included, want an instant connection, because putting in the work of actually getting to know someone (in real life, not on a phone) is arduous and requires sacrifice and vulnerability that we aren’t ready to give.
Read MoreYou should just drive across the country,” she said lightheartedly, and laughter ensued. Drive across the country, what an absurd idea. But then the joke got taken one step too far and all of a sudden we were plotting about who would pay my rent for a month and where I could stop to stay the night in Oklahoma and Arizona and California. Suddenly, I was calling my parents and asking if I would still be allowed to come home for Christmas if I made a rather (arguably) reckless decision and drove my tired, thirteen-year-old car across the country. (It took some negotiation but I am, indeed, still allowed to come home.) We sat in a coffee shop for an hour and hammered out the plan and concluded that there really wouldn’t be one, that sometimes you have to take a leap, whether or not it looks like a promising landing, and whether or not people are going to speculate about where your mind might have run off to.
Read MoreJust 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.
Read MoreSince taking that first step, I’ve made the trip back to speak in numerous classes and even at other events. Yes, the introvert in me still needs plenty of time to recover after public speaking. But every time I went back to campus, it got easier. With every step—every time I said “yes” when I wanted to say “no”—I gained momentum.
That’s another great thing about baby steps: every step you take builds momentum—stamina to keep going, strength for the journey.
Read MoreIn all seriousness, though, I felt like I had transported right back to where I was my senior year, caught in the in-between of trying to hold on so tightly to those last few months of my life as a student, and looking so forward to venturing out of it. But it brought back that old familiar, restless feeling—the same feeling I had when I got back from London, and when I first moved here—of wanting so many things and trying to figure out a way to make them all coexist.
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