I’m coming up on my one-year mark of graduating at John
Carroll.
I can’t believe it.
It doesn’t seem possible.
One year? One whole year?
One year ago I was apathetically preparing for finals,
enthusiastically preparing my liver for Put-In-Bay, and begrudgingly preparing
my brain to deal with the very real reality of “shit….this is it. It’s almost
over…now what?”
My mother told me that it was going to take a year. That I
needed to give myself one full year before I started thinking I had somehow
failed at the whole adult (well…pseudo-adult) thing.
Needless to say, my type-A personality and eternal lack of
impatience saw this as an essentially impossible task. But here I am. One year
later. And like…I survived. I did it.
She told me last year that by this time this year I’d have a
job I loved, a new (well new to me) car, be living in a new apartment, be able
to travel, and maybe even have the whole ‘dating as a millennial 20-something”
figured out . And…by some miracle, act of God, luck, or some combination of the
three…here I am.
I swear she must have some crazy foresight or something
because she was right, but like, aren’t mothers always right?
So as a sit here at my job I love, with a boyfriend whom I
adore, a car that doesn’t threaten to kill me every time it rains, and getting
ready to finally move out of my deathtrap apartment and into Little Italy, I’m
here to tell you that you will do it too.
You will be able to say the same sort of things that I am
now.
Your goals are most likely different than mine. You may not
even know what they are. And you may be freaking out about not having a job or
a place to live or what you are going to do without those late night drinks
with friends on the porch watching the freshmen navigate Warrensville.
But it’s okay.
You’re going to be okay.
Just give yourself a year. One year.
Don’t even think about looking back and comparing yourself
to were you thought you “should” be or where anyone else is until you start
approaching that one-year mark.
Your whole life can change in that one year.
So enjoy these last few weeks. Enjoy the finals and the
celebrations and Put in Bay and Senior Week and Baccalaureate and graduation
practice and your family taking 2000 pictures.
Then the second you take off that graduation cap and gown,
after all the pictures and tears and congratulatory dinners are over, set a
calendar reminder for May 22, 2017.
Title it “You Did It.”
Because you’re going to do it.
You just need to give yourself time.
