Back To School Blues

As I scrolled through Facebook statuses this past week, I couldn’t help but to notice that the “Back to School Craze” has begun. Whether it be parents sending their kids off to elementary school, teenagers complaining about high school, or young adults on their way to college, another year of education is about to begin. And for the first time in my life since I was a Kindergartener, I’m not part of it. I’ve graduated. I’m in the position I’ve feared being in since I first understood the meaning of the word career.

It’s strange being the jobless graduate. I’ve been the honors student for most of my life. I graduated 10th in my class from MacArthur High School. I graduated with a 3.74 GPA from SUNY Albany with a major in English and double minor in Journalism and Psychology. I won a Presidential Undergraduate Research Award for my thesis: “Social Media Fetishism: The Substitution of Life, The Disavowal of Death, and The Zombie Syndrome.” Up until now, I’ve always felt successful. Yet here I am, the jobless graduate, selling myself to the world and hoping that someone wants to buy me. I know it will happen eventually. I was just hoping it’d have happened sooner.

Life is unpredictable. As Lou Holtz once said, “Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.” We cannot control the world around us. We can only control our selves. We can only control our own actions. Despite feeling somewhat discouraged when my expectations exceed my reality, I maintain determination to succeed. So I didn’t get into a graduate school for creative writing. So I didn’t get hired somewhere within the first two and a half months after I graduated. I believe that I performed at my absolute best throughout my academic career and I am not ashamed of the results. Sometimes we must re-adjust our expectations and set new short-term goals. It is not a defeat; it is merely an unexpected transition. I will continue to do my best, trusting that I will find my place in this world.

My mom always tells me, “Most of us don’t end up where we think we will. A lot of people don’t even do what they went to college for.” In just these past 4 years after high school, I’ve seen that truth in many lives. I’ve seen friends have a child and start a family. They didn’t plan that. I’ve seen friends become drug addicts. They didn’t plan that. I’ve seen some of those addicts recover. They never thought that was possible. I’ve seen friends switch majors and switch schools. They didn’t plan that. I’ve seen friends drop out of college to pick up a job. None of it was a part of any original plan. Looking around, it’s comforting to see that there are a lot of us that don’t know exactly where we’re going. We’ve taken different paths but we continue on them with the hope that will eventually reach our destinations, wherever and whenever they may be.

In two weeks, I am driving my girlfriend back to SUNY Albany so she can finish her last year of college. For the first time, we will have a long distance relationship. We’ve been planning this for over a year but it doesn’t make it any easier. She’s my best friend. I don’t want her to be three hours away. I want her next to me. But at the same time, I’m excited for her. This last year of college is going to be fun. She’s starting as Supervisor at her job, she just got an on-campus apartment with her friends, and she’s twenty-one this semester so no worries about getting into bars. Even though I won’t be there every day to enjoy it with her, I’m happy because I know that this is going to be a great year for her. Plus, I’ll be visiting as much as I can. Neither of us are sure where we will end up; we are only sure that we want to end up there together.

Despite life’s turbulence, we are guided by our hopes and dreams. We are given no guarantees. We are made no promises. We are granted only the ability to try our hardest and see what happens. It seems harsh. But not knowing what happens next is part of the beauty of life. When I was younger, I would always read the last page of a book first. The thrill of life is that we never know when we are reading the last page. We may be able to look back upon previous chapters but we can never read ahead. We can only hope that we will enjoy what comes next.

This week, let’s meditate on hope for the future. No matter where we are in our lives, each and every one of us has a future. Not a single one of us knows what that future will hold. But we do know that we’re bound to experience it on this planet together. Whether it’s good or bad, we should never forget that we’re all on this rock floating through space, circling a ball of burning gas. We know that we cannot control the future with absolute certainty. But we can hope. And we can try our best to create a world where dreams become realities. So whether life has gone as you planned or whether you’ve been shocked at every turn, let’s hope and strive for the best future we can create.

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