When I looked up from the mountain of forms that I’ve been filling out for school and realized that April was upon us (though, really, I should have noticed sooner, as the cherry blossoms around town have already bloomed and the petals have already been shed), I also had the simultaneous realization that we’re nearing a year since I graduated college.
I thought it would be a worthwhile task to think about how life is different from both my expectations of how it’d go and from where I actually was twelve months ago.
I’ve known that I intended on going to grad school for years at this point. Honestly, I probably could have told you that in high school. A lot of the job opportunities that have interested me for a quite some time have been those that have postgraduate education built into their prerequisites.
And after going to Barcelona in my sophomore year, I knew the best opportunity I would have to return would be to attend grad school there.
However, right after I graduated, I really began to doubt my ability to get into a grad program. As I did more and more research, I started to notice that the median age of most grad students was in their late twenties. I was worried that I didn’t have enough experience or anything particularly special in my background that would make me stand out in such a crowd.
This made me hesitant to apply because, not to toot my own horn or anything but, I’m not used to failing and the idea of actually getting a real rejection is kind of absolutely terrifying.
After some gentle cajoling from friends and family, I finally submitted my application this past January, but fully expected to not get in. Because of that, I didn’t really entertain the idea of what it would be like to be living in Spain again and going to grad school there.
Imagine my surprise when I received my acceptance letter and I suddenly had to completely change my mindset and expectations for the next year.
To be honest, what I’ve been doing the past eleven months has also been a bit of a surprise. My mom bought Paperquirks pretty late into my senior year, so the idea of moving to Seattle suddenly became very viable because I had a guaranteed job! And not only a guaranteed job, but one that dealt with something that I was genuinely interested in and that would be so much fun after four years of working my ass off in undergrad.
Moving back in with my parents has also been an interesting adjustment. I’m trying to have a Spanish mindset about it; it’s very common for kids in Spain to live with their parents into their early thirties and beyond. But going from four years living with essentially other children (because let’s be real, college kids are called college kids for a reason) back to living in my parents’ house is perhaps a bigger change than the other way around was. I’m very grateful for their generosity in taking me in, though, because I was so unsure about what I’d be doing that the idea of committing to a lease or something similar was very off-putting to me.
Anyway, all this to say that I had not realized how full of surprises life becomes after graduation. It’s a little crazy after having life so very structured for sixteen years how many possibilities there are.
I realize these are not particularly earth-shattering or mind-blowing meditations on the wild and unpredictable nature of life itself, but they’re things I hadn’t really believed(?), accepted(?) until I was actually faced with them the past couple of months.
Basically, I’m a little overwhelmed with what actually being an adult means and how you really do get to make active decisions to change the course of the future ahead of you. I hadn’t realized the scope of this freedom nor the of the ocean of alternatives that me in my little sailboat are faced with. But that doesn’t mean I’m not excited to set sail!
Aw, what a precious little child-like metaphor to end this blog post that skimmed the surface of both my quarter life crisis and mild existential dread.
Thanks for those of you who have supported my GoFundMe over the past couple of days! I don’t have any specific people to shout out because everyone has been donating anonymously! But I thank you all nonetheless. If you’re in the financial position to donate, I would appreciate it more than you know. There are rewards for donors listed on my page!
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