With graduation approaching in days I now can count on my fingers, I realize that I am in a pivotal time of transition.
It is a peculiar viewpoint in which I reflect on my experiences as a student while looking toward my future life path in the ominous territory we call “the real world.”
It’s amazing how much one can change in four years.
I am not ready to boldly say that I am a woman, but I am certainly not the same terrified, clueless freshman girl I was when I first moved into Irwin 17.
I have gone from freshman fraternity-hopping to the glory of finally being eligible to enter the sacred door to The Mine, only to discover that its luster also would fade.
People who began as timid acquaintances are now my best friends, the ones who will some day be in my wedding.
In academia, the once-dreaded three-page paper now seems like a vacation in comparison to LA 401 and senior sem projects.
While I wouldn’t want to do it again, college has been a good run. It’s amusing to flip through old Facebook albums. It is a visual reminder of just how much I really have changed, and also how much I treasure Baker memories.
Retrospection entertains me until I get to the end of the old Facebook albums and retract from yesteryears and snap back into reality. I continually ask myself, “What now?”
I am ready to move on, but I’m not sure what exactly that entails.
It’s fun to set goals and dreams for the future: a house, family, successful career and the white picket fence to enclose Fido. Yes, the complete American dream.
But that’s not going to happen immediately after exiting the stage in Collins Center. A diploma is not a ticket to my long-term aspirations. So again I ask, “What now?”
Society says to get a job. Grandma says to find a husband “before I become an old maid.”
But society doesn’t consider that establishing a career in the midst of a recession is no simple task, and Grandma doesn’t bear in mind that my boyfriend is in the middle of graduate school and the scary “M” word is taking the back burner for a while.
Perhaps I should have followed suit with many graduates and applied for grad school. But, quite frankly, I don’t want to yet.
I want to work, to get experience, then look at grad school after I have a more focused determination of what I want to accomplish in my career. I don’t think that the murky economy should dictate my life. While I must acknowledge its influence on the start of my career, it is still important to me to first obtain working-world exposure and then continue my education.
Armed with the maturity obtained through my sentimental college days and a vague picture of future prosperities, again I find myself confused for the now.
I have resolved to suck the last bit of marrow out of these last days at Baker, and then take it one day at a time. Eventually, those days will add up to a conclusive beginning.