Published in 2014, Marina Keegan’s book “The Opposite of Loneliness” details the life of a millennial student traversing her education at Yale, while questioning the way in which students are pushed through college and into careers they may not want. Half of the book contains short, fictional stories and the other half, nonfiction. What began as a short essay, which gives the book its title, Keegan’s novel beautifully captures what it feels like to live in a world with constant labels, absurd expectations and absolute freedom. Having died in a car accident just two weeks after graduating from Yale, Keegan is fully alive in her literature, forever memorialized in her wisdom and creativity.

Keegan’s ability to reach into the seemingly similar perspective of any college student in modern society, invoke a sense of belonging and freedom, and then encourage us to follow OUR paths and not anyone else’s speaks to her being far more wise than her age of 22. She mentions briefly that about a quarter of Yale’s graduating class each year goes into careers in consulting because that’s where the money is, yet of the 25 percent who do, very few actually are happy with that choice. It speaks to the nature of our society that young adults are sacrificing their personal passions and pursuit of happiness to be robots in jobs that already have enough employees. It is a sad, sad day when one realizes the job they hold is not the job for them. Do we have to be stuck in that job, though? Absolutely not.

Marina Keegan very much embodies the voice of millennials yearning to break free from the expectations and invisible chains of academic advisors explaining that giving up their passion is how you make it in the real world. She embodies the wise millennial who sees things not as they are, but how they should be. She does not whine once about not having enough and does not embody the complaining, self-entitled millennial who believes they are owed the world, or that life is “just too hard.” Keegan is strong in her vernacular, as well as her determination to achieve such great things in her life. Tragically, her life was cut short. Most people think of what could have been when it comes to someone who passed away, but with Marina Keegan we ought only think of what was: A brilliant, well-beyond-her time student at Yale, opened the eyes of readers to the beauty, confusion and liberation of entering “the real world.”

You can read Keegan’s essay here.