My past few weeks at home have been a whirlwind of doctor appointments. Since no one knows when I’ll have health insurance again, I’m cramming in all my possible doctors. It gets rough after awhile keeping track of all the different types of doctors and protocols. Before I knew it, I was sitting stark naked in the dentist chair one day and fully clothed with a paper gown on top of my outfit at the gynecologist the next day. It keeps my life exciting and, more importantly, it keeps my doctors on their toes.

However, home hasn’t been all mole checks and cholesterol tests. It’s also been a lot of cleaning. I’m moving to New York in less than a week and I’m slowly coming to the realization that I will never be home for college breaks ever again. After this it’s all long weekends and feel-sorry-for-myself unemployment weeks home. So I’m attempting to clean out my closet and keep only the things I actually want to bring with me. Read More »

After the novelty of college graduation (and all the great gifts that came with it) wore off, I spent a year crying myself to sleep. And I’m not exaggerating. While being done with school after 16 years was pretty liberating, not knowing what was coming next scared the sh*t out of me. And the fact that no one ever warned me how difficult being an adult would be made things a whole lot harder.

I went through a lot that first year – looking for a job, moving to a new city, ending a long relationship, and learning how to care for myself, to name a few – all by myself and now feel that I have the experience and knowledge to advise others on the transition. Because it’s a hard one and every college grad should know that they are not alone. Come back every week for another nugget of information to help you survive in the big, bad world.

My commencement speaker, like most commencement speakers, spent 25 minutes telling my graduating class about the endless possibilities in the real world. He spoke of our bright futures, giving back, and making the world a better place.  The speech was inspiring, but now that I’m on the other side of the cap and gown, I wish he had gone in another direction.

Perhaps he could have taken a more realistic approach and warned us of how hard that first year after college was going to be. And that it was OK to be really, really unhappy.

When you’re a college senior, life after college seems like a glamorous world filled with an awesome new job, an awesome new city, and a bright, successful future. You see all those people who graduated before you living it up and enjoying their new place in the real world.

The reality, though, isn’t quite so bright and cheery. The truth: that first year out of college isn’t always so easy. In fact, it’s pretty sh*tty. Read More »

I’ve grown up a lot in the past week. How could I not with all the positive encouragement from the commenters last week? I got up off the couch, got a pants suit, and got a job with benefits. Well I got off the couch… and that’s a start.

This past week I went to a BBQ at one of my few (I’m talking 1.5) remaining high school friend’s houses. I don’t know why the adults there think that the best side dish to ribs is asking me about my future. I had cole slaw hanging out of my mouth half the time as I explained that, yes, I was doing an internship; no, it was not paid in any amount that can support me; no, there are no health benefits; no, they are not hiring at the end of the summer; yes, that’s definitely potato salad hanging in my hair (the most asked question of the day).

I’m about ready to start making flashcards with my plans to hand out to people rather than spend four hours attempting to justify why I thought it was a good idea to get an internship instead of a job after graduation. Apparently some people don’t keep up with the news and are unaware that most of the class of ’09 did not graduate with job offers.

I’m pretty sure I  sound angry. But I’m pretty sure that anger is one of the stages in the grieving process. Last week was denial and I think next week is hunger…but I’m no doctor, so I can’t verify that.

But I am starting to slowly move on. And, like I said before, I’m practically a functioning adult now. I’ve taken a liking to cottage cheese and I think that habit places me around 75 years old. I guess it’s one new grown-up habit a week from now on. Who knows what I’ll pick up this week. Maybe learning how to file taxes? Or perhaps how to shop at Chico’s?

It’s all up in the air for right now.

Considering the fact that I’ve done nothing but sulk (with the occasional break for a anxiety panic attack over my future) since graduation, it’s relatively amazing that I was able to find time in my self despair to write this blog. Graduating college is worse than I ever imagined. Probably because I always imagined going straight from graduation to an awesome job with an awesome apartment in an awesome city. (Thank you, Lauren Conrad!)

Instead I’m sitting at home covered in hummus (I couldn’t find the pita chips so I’ve just been eating it straight) yelling at my sister to answer the damn phone. I can’t take that old-fashioned landline ringing.

My mother’s turned into a hovercraft and a social butterfly. She spends half her time leaving me alone on the couch to go out with friends (pray tell, when did she attain those?) and the other half asking me what would make me feel better. To which I answer, “Umm I would like you to build a time machine and transport me right back to the part of Freshman year where it stopped being awkward.” So far she has failed at this task. She has one more week to reach success before I give her the next “make me feel better task” of finding me a job. Read More »

After the novelty of college graduation (and all the great gifts that came with it) wore off, I spent a year crying myself to sleep. And I’m not exaggerating. While being done with school after 16 years was pretty liberating, not knowing what was coming next scared the sh*t out of me. And the fact that no one ever warned me how difficult being an adult would be made things a whole lot harder.

I went through a lot that first year – looking for a job, moving to a new city, ending a long relationship, and learning how to care for myself, to name a few – all by myself and now feel that I have the experience and knowledge to advise others on the transition. Because it’s a hard one and every college grad should know that they are not alone. Come back every week for another nugget of information to help you survive in the big, bad world.

The hardest part of graduating college is not the fact that your friends are now spread all over the country. It is not the fact that you can no longer party 6 nights a week with $1 pitchers. It isn’t even the whole “getting a job” thing (even now).

The hardest part is having no freaking clue how to do anything. Read More »

Dear Waiter-Full-Of-Wisdom,

I recently had the pleasure and delight of meeting you while I dined during my Spring Break. I had planned on enjoying a simple dinner with friends, so you can imagine what a fabulous surprise it was to discover that you were not only a waiter, but also a career advisor and stock market analyst. At first you played coy by just taking our drink orders and delivering our food. Don’t get me wrong, you did a stupendous job as a waiter, but you didn’t really start to shine until the small talk began.

It started slow – hometowns, hobbies, and colleges. But then we when we got to majors, your true expertise came out. You asked around the table what everyone was studying. Psychology, English, Sociology. Then I said my major, communications. Your mouth dropped open and you threw your tray up into the air.

“Communications!?!?!? There’s no future in that.”

I managed to restrain myself and not get into the real intricacies of my major within my communications school. I clapped my hand over my mouth to stop myself from shouting out, “You’re a 42 year old waiter working at an amusement park. There’s no future in that.” Read More »

When I get back to school after spring break it is the end. In fact many middle aged people have told me (with their usual unsolicited advice) more recently than usual that college was the best four years of their lives and after they graduated it was all downhill from there. Then after dispensing their advice and patting my head, they coughed up a lung, because that’s what old people do.

Now I’ve done some math and considering some of these people are in their 50′s now, the “downhill from there” means the last 30+ years of their lives have been nothing but sorrow, disaster, and failure. The most promising part of their day now is their daily dose of Activia yogurt (people over 40 can’t eat solid foods…clinically proven) and reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond.

So with those thoughts in mind my friends and I created a bucket list with everything we want to do before we graduate. We crossed off the easy stuff first. Anything involving stealing, obscenity, or a combination of the two was completed within the first week. But now we are left with the trickier things.

Number 14: Fall in love. It was so easy to write down and yet it’s so hard to accomplish. Riddle me that.

Number 3: Actually watch The Bucket List and decide who of our friends is Morgan Freeman and who is Jack Nicholson. I’ve been putting that one off since I know I’ll get assigned to be the Jack Nicholson of the bunch.

Number 7: Bring a murdered ghost back through a seance and solve the mystery of their death. This one has so much red tape I don’t even know where to begin. First of all, it’s already been done in Now and Then and they had a better soundtrack to do it. Second, we can’t agree on who to bring back (I voted for Amelia Earhart). Thirdly, no one wants to do it in their own apartment in case the ghost lingers. Read More »

I have no idea what I want to do with the rest of my life. And yes, I know there are others in the same boat. I know I don’t have to declare a major for another year, and I know there’s time. I’ve heard it all. But it doesn’t leave me any less nervous.

In some ways, I like the unclear path. I am taking classes because they sound interesting, not because they will help me complete a major. I am learning just because I want to, and my grades are just because I want to try my best, not because I know I am looking for a certain grad school or want to impress future employees. For all I know, I could be studying subjects which will be completely irrelevant to my future. So I have no pressure.

Except, I still have pressure. In some ways, it’s even more than I had in high school. Sure, it’s not like I know I have to get a certain GPA and do certain activities to get into college. But now that I’m here, I can’t believe there’s no more plan. I am the kind of person who plans out her entire future—not minute-by-minute or a 10-year-plan, more like a general idea of what’s to come– but now I have no concept of past college. All my life, I knew I was going to go to graduate high school and go to college. Now I’m here, and I can check that off the list. Read More »

As a creative writing major, I’m extremely lucky to have parents who didn’t scoff at getting the arty side of a liberal arts education. My parents are voracious readers who have a high level of respect for the arts, and as a result they can be happy for me, even when my class schedule looks distinctly impractical.

Love in the Novel

Nabokov

Intro to Buddhist Thought

These are the kind of classes my parents put up with throughout my college career, with nary an Econ class to be found among the lot.

Many students feel a lot of pressure, however, to take classes that will turn around into the best profit. They know their parents are dropping some major Benjamins to keep them in a good school, and they want to return the favor by, at the very least, not making their parents go gray worrying that their children will be living in a box on the street. So they take Econ and finance classes. They try to become good little doctors and lawyers and I-bankers.

But most of the people I know taking that path aren’t particularly happy doing it. Read More »

My name is K, and I was in a sorority.

That is, I’m an alum. I still wear my butt-shorts to sleep at night and my Greek Week t-shirts to the gym. I have sorority jewelry, and my best friends are people I pledged with. I may or may not have my affiliation listed on my resume. And I am not ashamed.

What does irk the hell out of me, though, are the characters who, post-college, find it appropriate to judge me and still make the same assumptions that were made in college. Just a heads up, kids, but just like no one cares if you were cool in high school, no one could care any less whether you were cool in college. And by hating on me for being Greek, you’re definitely no cooler than the next a**hole.

Sure, I partied, but so did a large percentage of the independents (oh that’s right, there’s a label for them, too). Shocker, sorority girls aren’t always the drunk mess you expect them to be.

So let’s clarify a few things, shall we?

#1. No, I did not buy my friends. Surprise! I actually have other friends who aren’t Greek. Who cares where or how you meet people if they’re quality? I lucked out; my house was full of girls I clicked with, many of whom will probably be in my wedding. I could just as easily say you bought all your college friends because you paid tuition to attend a university with thousands of other people, right? You’re electing to join an institution where you will happen into people…. kind of makes you a hypocrite to call me out. I’m not picking people to hang out with based on whether or not they were in a frat or sorority in college, and if you are, you’re living a sad, sad life. Read More »