American writer Charles Bukowski once said, “you have to die a few times before you can really live.” That’s what being a college graduate feels like.
This week I witnessed a myriad of my friends from college post about their first day of school. It finally struck me that I was a college graduate and my self-proposed sabbatical was real. I made a conscious decision that for the next year I would not set foot in a classroom, buy a textbook, or start a degree.
After seventeen years of school, I finally decided I had earned a break. I announced it to anyone who asked and it really didn’t sink in until August came and I found myself not preparing for school but for work.
Being a college graduate is a bittersweet feeling. It is a relief to not have to worry about classes, tuition, or grades but it is a great sadness to say goodbye to all the great people I met during four years of school.
Seeing all of my friends’ posts made me feel like a ghost who hasn’t crossed over yet. I say a ghost because I find myself stuck in a limbo known to some as a gap year. While some of my friends jumped right into graduate school, law school, and medical school, I decided to step back and live for the first time in my life.
As someone who has his career plan down to a T since before high school, it was a moment of serendipity to not return to school. I realized after four years, two degrees, two senior seminar research papers, and being a part of numerous clubs and organizations, I burned myself out.
I graduated college, in the words of writer Courtney Martin, “high on my own potential” and “ready to take on the world.”But once I came back down to earth, after the graduation celebrations, cards, and moving out of my dorm and back into my room at home, I died, metaphorically. As I entered the real world to look for jobs and begin “adulating,” my undergraduate persona began to wither away. I didn’t know who I was going to be without school. But I soon was going to learn.
The first four months post-graduation is a roller-coaster ride of epic highs and rock-bottom lows. I’ve traveled the world, reunited with old friends, and accomplished a major life goal but I have also been received no job offers, had to endure never-ending adult responsibilities such as paying bills and saving money, and dealing with the most daunting task of all- graduate school.
What seemed like the next step now appears to be a tall order in need of undivided attention. Graduate school means for the first time in my life I would find myself on my own. So this year of death, as I call it, will be a year of limbo. I still keep in touch with my former classmates and cheer them on as they continue their education; I am in the process of applying to my list of schools and anticipate the wait of acceptance/rejection, and for the first time I will begin to live.
