College
flashed by me all bright-eyed and packed with experiences that I somehow always
managed to laugh my way through with the help of my best friends. The
late-night study sessions for exams in classes so frivolous I barely remember
their names, the morning-after recaps with a cup of Community Coffee and your
roommate, and the breakfast beignet runs were some enlightened existence.
College quickly became some alternate universe where you actually got away with
thinking you had it all figured out, perhaps the once in a lifetime moment when
all the circumstances you’re faced with enable you to believe that you’re the
exception to every rule. It’s the best time of your life, right before you hit
the worst. It’s a quick drop to the bottom when you leave college and you
realize that you weren’t in fact the exception to many rules—like scoring a job
post-grad, like balancing your career life (before it’s even started of course)
and your love life, and like, thinking that you would be the rare
twenty-something who really had it all figured out.
In
college, you justified wearing something with rhinestones and hooking up with
some guy from your dorm because you were under the impression that it wasn’t
your “real life,” that it was all some last hurrah before the next part of your
adult life sinks in. Example: Weird blue shots at the bar no one can ever
really remember the name of? Sure! Trying fashion trends that were never meant
for your body type? Hell yes! Texting the guy who you know better than to text?
Done and done, double (okay, triple) texted! What other kinds of
self-deprecating acts can I somehow involve myself in?! It’s college, it’s being 20, it couldn’t
possibly be real, right? The thing is, there was no lingering guilt because
society told you all of this batshit crazy insane stuff was okay because it
fell under the College Loophole, the “Let’s pick off-the-wall majors, request
Rihanna songs at the bar and get Cheesy Gordita Crunches at 4 a.m.” loophole
that promises it’s all going to work out no matter how many typos your last
text message had. And it was amazing! It was the best time of your life. It was
a fleeting moment of enchanting illusion that was made acceptable because it
was temporary. Simply put, they let us have it because they knew it wouldn’t
last.
When
I was in college, I used to think four years really is too long to be
questioning your entire life, especially because it hadn’t even really happened
yet. But now, I cant help but miss the piece of me in college that had no
reason to believe everything would work out for me, but fiercely believed it
would anyway. The conviction you learn after the many “rock bottom” points in
college is priceless. Perhaps, it’s what makes you fearless and so willing to
believe that you are the exception to any and every rule. “But I have a college
degree, damnit!” It’s easy to look at the real world from the outside and see
yourself taking it on, conquering it the way your professors said you could. It’s
easy because you envision it, but tell yourself you wont have to actually do it
for a while.
Recent
grad life is by far the biggest mess I’ve ever encountered. Not the kind of
stumbling home arm-in-arm with my roommate on a Thursday night, kind of mess.
It’s entirely more vague than the very specific little messes of college life.
It’s a bigger picture mess. My love life is literally stretched to a barely
acceptable existence, my career is just taking off and I have no idea where
it’s taking me. To put it shortly, it’s that horribly awkward moment in between
thinking you’ve got it all figured out and realizing that nothing ever really
happens at the right times or for the right reasons, that there’s no such thing
as fate or destiny, but that all you have of yourself is the decisions you make
and the people you choose to care about.
I’m
not going to lie and glorify it like the college version of myself would’ve
been trained to. It’s a wonderfully miserable mess.
