The Horror-Movie Reality of Senior Year

A week from today, I will be finishing up my last first week of college.  I start my senior year on Tuesday, and if you don't know how terrified I am of that...well...there you go.  While fraternities and sororities are planning "epic" back to school parties, and my Facebook feed is inundated with plans for Syllabus Week, I'm internally rocking back and forth in the fetal position.

As much as I know I should be excited (and I am...somewhere deep down, a very little bit), should be experiencing Senioritis, and should be more than ready to get out of a classroom for the first time in my nearly 22 years of life...I'm not.  At all.

For as long as I can remember preparing for college - studying for the SATs, trying to decide what to major in and where to spend these four years - I can also remember being warned.  I've had my parents, my teachers, the news, and politics all tell me that the "real world" is scarier than that horror movie you watched when you weren't supposed to as a kid.  That there are just no jobs available, no matter what your major is; that a college degree is going the way of the high-school diploma, and even a masters degree might not guarantee I'll be able to pay off my thousands of dollars worth of student debt a year from now (and I do mean thousands).

This article from the New York Times talks about how most entry-level jobs are now requiring graduate school, and that's from 2 years ago.  For a job that may very well pay less than I make now as a waitress, I have to spend 6 years in post-graduate education and thousands of dollars that I can't truly imagine ever being able to pay back - at least not before my 80th birthday.  For someone who doesn't plan on going to graduate school, who intends to be in the work-force a year from now, everything the media and "grown-ups" have to say about the world I'm walking out into is vomit-inducing, and I feel like I'm going into it blind-folded.

For the first time in my life, I don't know what the next step is.  I've always had grade levels, report cards, and summer vacations to mark where I am and where to go next.  Come May, I won't have that anymore - I'll have a diploma, and a thousand paths in front of me, most of which I may not be able to take.  For the first time, I won't have a clear plan of where to go next - and for someone who has grown up in a culture that always had the steps in front of me planned, from jamboree to college, that is probably the most terrifying thing I've ever experienced. 

Reasons Being Grown Up ROCKS!

After yesterday's post, I'm feeling a bit better about this whole "growing up" thing.  Maybe because a couple of lovely ladies in the comments were sweet enough to tell me it gets better, or maybe because the light of day adds a bit of perspective that just isn't there at 1AM.  

Whatever the reason - I'm remembering why, 10 years ago, I couldn't wait to be this old.  I think we all reach a certain age where we start bashing "the real world", and wondering why we used to pretend to be all grown up when we were little.  

But maybe the key is to remember the amazing things we envisioned adulthood to be when we were still in preschool.  At least a few of them are true...

(1)

You're the boss of things.  Yeah, you have a boss at work who gets to tell you what to do for several hours a day, but then you get to go home.  To your home, where you can eat ice cream for breakfast with all the cherries on top you could ever want.  You can stay in bed all day Sunday if you want, just because you don't feel like moving and this book is too good to put down.  

(2)

No bed time!! 

I think that's all that really needs to be said about that.

Here

(3)

Nobody's going to send you to time-out if you leave your clothes in the dryer a bit longer than technically you should.  So what if the cycle is over, and the clothes are going to wrinkle if you don't fold them?  Big Brother is on!

(4)

And speaking of Big Brother, you get to choose what to watch on TV.  No parents putting on PBS or, horror of horrors, Fox News.  Want to watch 5 straight episodes of Friends OnDemand? Go for it!

(5)

You're the one making the decisions, so if something goes wonderfully right - nobody else gets to take the credit. You earned that promotion.  You paid all those bills early, and had enough money to go buy that really cute shirt you were looking at last week.  

Here

And if things go wrong, yeah it sucks - but you know nobody else put you there.  There's a sense of control and even calmness in knowing that you screwed up, and don't have to wait around for anybody else to fix it.

(6)

Family holiday?  No more sitting at the Fisher Price table in the corner.  Now you get to sit at the grown-up table, and have conversations that don't revolve around who has to clean up the blocks after dinner.

(7)

At the end of a bad day, you get to come home to your bed.  If you want someone to talk to, you can.  And if you just want to be alone, there's nobody pestering you about what went wrong.

And don't worry - I won't tell if you still sleep with a stuffed animal (probably because I do), or if you want to call your parents for advice after a bad day.  

 

So what do you love about being grown up??

<3

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Lovely Serendipity

I don't think I've ever really believed in serendipity.  I've seen it in movies, and read it in books, and watched it on television; but in real life, it was basically a beautiful unicorn - one I'd never get to photograph.

I dreamt of serendipity - of meeting my husband at work one night when he sat down in my section (although let's be real for just one second: if a man at my table tried to give me his number, I'd probably write him off as a total creep to whom I'd served one too many Golden Monkeys).  Of vacationing in New York City and finding the perfect apartment while there - deciding to pick up and move at the last second just because.  Of just happening to fall into my dream job, somehow lucky enough to meet someone on the street.
I day-dreamed all these and a thousand more pieces of my would-be life, and I never truly believed any of them would actually happen.  Life seemed too real for that, for the fairy tales made of serendipity and perfect apartments and love at first sight.  So I just spent 21 years dreaming of things I never believed would come to pass.

And maybe I still don't believe; I am, at heart, a sceptic.
But after today, I have to believe that there was something in the breeze, in that moment at work when a dream walked in and made itself real.

For today, I believe in serendipity.

<3

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Life is Good

Life lately has been crazy - finals and moving and two jobs, all mixed in with those moments where you just want to sleep forever.

But in the middle of all that, in those moments you don't document or mark in your calendar, are dinners made up of free pizza shared with your roommates.  Making cannolis night after night because you and your best friend/roommate learned how to make them one Tuesday night for no other reason than out of boredom. The feeling of finishing a good book that you really didn't expect to enjoy so much.  Waking up in your apartment, knowing that this is yours in a way that a dorm room never was.

Life has been busy, and there are moments where I don't want to move out of exhaustion.
But life is good...just sometimes, you have to look for it.

<3
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I am a Small Town who Dreams of Being a City

I live in a small town that is all at once clinging to its Stars Hollow-esque roots and dreaming of one day being a city somewhere between Center City, Philadelphia and San Francisco.

~~~

I thought this as I toured my college for the first time, realizing for the first and certainly not the last time that I will not escape a certain type of residency despite my whole-hearted childhood dreams turned pleas to find myself in Times Square looking up at the skyscrapers and the lights above and around me, feeling at home for what I imagined would be the first time.  I believed this was the first step on the road to the "real" first step when maybe, it was the first step on the road to where I really wanted to be.

And I realized it a thousand times over as I toured my college again and again, eventually moving in a year and a half later - all of my most important belongings packed into the trunks of two cars and gradually carried into a smaller-than-I-realized dorm room, one tiny box adorned with one tiny note from my father (a note I'd cry while reading, realizing for the first time I'd really left home; my roommate across the room wondering just what she'd gotten herself into by agreeing to live with me).

I realized it as I explored the town with my new friends two and a half years ago, walking into stores and boutiques and restaurants, feeling grown up when I was oh-so-far from it; as I noticed the street carts and the architecture and the people - all reminiscent of a city I thought I'd find myself in one day.

I realized it again tonight, sitting in a class that is teaching me what I will do for the rest of my life; and this time I realized it differently.

I realized it as a fact of not just what my town is, but of who I am.  I've spent my life dreaming of being someone bigger, someone who fits into a city and who's life mirrors what a city is.  

When I was, for the first time in my life, able to actively decide where I would live, I chose not a city, but a town that dreamt of being a city.  With a city around the corner, its welcoming arms open to me for the next four years, I instead chose the small town with its decades-old buildings and college-built community.  

~~~

I think we choose the places that define us.  

All my life I ached for the city - I dreamt of it, and longed for the days spent exploring its twisting roads and skyscrapers reaching for the sky.  I thought I would one day find my place in the city - that it was where I belonged, and where I would find myself.  

But when the time came to choose that for myself, I actively refused it.  I turned away from it even with the opportunity staring me down; and instead I found that I was immersing myself in small-town America, a town that is, at most, reminiscent of Manayunk and New Hope and at least, a fictional storybook setting where "everyone knows your name". 

I chose the place that was me, even as I firmly believed that I was someone else entirely, and managed to convince everyone around me of that belief.  

I always dreamt of being someone big - of surrounding myself with big people and big buildings.  I dreamt of the anonymity that came with that bigness, and convinced myself I would one day be immersed in it.

Instead, I find myself here, wanting nothing more than to stay in a place like this forever.

I live in a town that dreams of being a city;

but when push comes to shove, it rejects high-reaching buildings and hotels.  It finds its home in well-known bars and restaurants that choose to cater to the not-so-well-known.  It burrows itself into small corners, blocks that would make New York City laugh, and privately owned boutiques.  

When it comes down to it, I live in a town that is exactly what and where it should be.

~~~

We choose the people and places and things that define us.  We surround ourselves with definitions of who we are: through our friends, our homes, our favorite books and that movie we could watch a thousand times.

No matter what we tell ourselves, we choose for ourselves what and where and who we want to be.  One day, you will wake up and find yourself exactly where you need to be without your ever realizing you were making your way there all along.

<3

In which I Ask the Deep Questions

"If someone came up to you and handed you a book and you started reading it and realized it was a book about your life, would you read it to the end?"

- Source

At some point, we've all be asked this question, and it always brings with it a thousand more....
And if I did know when it would end, would I change anything?....
and would those changes be as meaningful as if I had done them otherwise?
Does it make a difference; if I had forever, wouldn't I eventually get around to doing everything on my bucket list?  Or do I need the finality of life to motivate me?
What would I do differently, anyway?

...questions nobody really knows how to answer unless they find themselves in the situation.
Do we ever really believe in change, in action unless we don't have time to put it off?  Do the same deadlines we craved in high-school apply to life, too?

I could list a thousand more questions, but I don't think I'd find any answers that way.
I don't think that really, without the situation to guide us, we can ever find the answers to anything;
but as long as I'm trying, I don't want to know.
If I only do something because I feel like it's my last chance to do it...doesn't it change the meaning?
I think life changes, deep personal changes, have to come from you desperately wanting that change.  If you only make the leap because you feel obligated - you haven't really changed anything.

What do you think?  Would you want to know?  And would it make a difference if you did know?

<3

In Which I am My Own Valentine

For the third year in a row now, I am counting down the days to Valentine's Day with nobody to count them with.

And I don't mean that I've had relationships over the years that have simply not coincided with February 14th.  I don't mean I've dated on the weekends, or that I've danced with boys at parties.  I haven't compiled a list of cheesy pickup lines that men have used in classes, at bars, while grocery shopping...  Because there have been so few.

I haven't had relationships.  The dates have been few and far between.  Surrounded by friends on New Year's Eve, all pieces of individual couples, I watched from the sidelines as everyone else embraced the person they loved.

And for a while, I've struggled with that.  

21, a junior in college, surrounded by relationships forming, lasting, breaking, holding, building, loving, and everything that surrounds that, is not a good time to be seemingly perpetually alone.

And that is how I saw it: alone.  

It's a scary word, but it's how our culture views it, portrays it, and by extension, expects you to see it.  I was taught, through movies, books, articles, and people around me that to be single is to be somehow lacking in a shared human experience.

Or at least, at a certain point that is what it became.

As though there is a middle ground - Taylor Swift, who is almost always a part of a we, and always with a different he, is not single enough.  I, on the other hand, am entirely too single, and have therefore been graced with the word nobody wants to find their name connected with.

Alone. 

And so I asked myself: what am I doing wrong - am I making myself single?

It wasn't a question I asked lightly - I tiptoed around it for months, pretending I didn't see it standing there dressed in the brightest colors it could find, shining its spotlight on me.  

When I finally did take the question to heart, I asked it quietly.  At night, with the lights out and only my thoughts to answer.

I asked it with help from a friend, one who suggested I be less picky.  Less neurotic.  Less scared.

More open to trying something new, with someone new.

(I should add, she felt she was being helpful.  She didn't ask the question in a cruel or manipulative way.  She had no endgame.  She saw me unhappy, and tried to help.  And for months after I finally acknowledged the question in the back of my mind, I pretended she had never asked; instead, posing the question to people I knew would agree that she was wrong.  That there was nothing wrong with me.  I found very few of those people, because three years seems like 20.)

And slowly, the question seeped into my subconscious.  

It popped up when I wasn't expecting it.  When I was playing third wheel to friends I'd known for years, when I was watching a particularly sweet rom-com, when I saw friends' relationships come and go, when I watched an elderly couple hold hands in the grocery store, and a young couple embrace for the first time.  

It came up everywhere, and I wondered if maybe I was meant to be alone.  

I joked about it, worried about it, tried to do something about it by trying to find interest in men I knew I didn't want to be with.  I struggled with it, trying to find the middle-ground between my mind that was telling me desperation is disgusting, and my heart that was telling me there must be something wrong with me.

And as 2013 rolled around and I watched another February draw closer, I reviewed all the failed attempts at relationships I've put myself through since the beginning of the decade.  The relationships I never tried because I just couldn't see it working.  The ones I tried too hard for, only to find I never should have wasted so much of my time.  The ones in between and the ones that never happened.

I went over and over in my head the reasoning behind those failed attempts, and came out finding myself lacking in something, although I couldn't put my finger on exactly what that something was.

I prepared for another year with no chocolate covered hearts.

I washed myself in the sadness that comes with being single on a holiday made to celebrate relationships, and condemn those who are not a part of one.  I tried to navigate my way through it, taking the trusted path I'd found over the years.  

But the thing is, that's ridiculous.

There is no reason for my being single - I just am.

And that's fine.  Just like being brunette or funny or introverted or any number of other things is fine.

And I only realized that because of a post I ran across on Thought Catalog; and because of the 20 or so articles I found on Google after reading that post.  

I'm not crazy, damaged, messed up, or too picky.

And I'm certainly not alone.
I'm surrounded by friends, by family, by a world full of people who are single.

And there is nothing wrong with not being a part of a relationship - it's not as though it defines who I am, even if movies would have me believe that it does.  I didn't do something specific that makes me somehow deserving of being "alone".  It is nowhere near as bad as the media makes it seem.  Being in a relationship does not fix everything - as great as it may be, it invites its own problems; it lets them sleep on the couch for a while, crowding up your living room until you deal with them.  Single doesn't bring the uninvited house guest.

The post I read said some things that really rang true to me - things that I know I have thought about.  Have considered as being the culprit behind my stunning lack of a relationship.

It said some things that everyone says: stop looking, and it will find you.  Be you.  Enjoy being single.

But it addressed the other things everyone says - the things they said more loudly, and to just the right people.

It said something that I've struggled to believe, because it's the one thing nobody says:

You're alone, because you should be.  Not because you're too picky, or you ignored that really great guy, or because Karma's a bitch.  

You're single because that guy or girl for you is still out there, also single.  Also waiting.

So stop waiting, and forget about it.

Single isn't inherently bad.  It is not really, in any way at all, even slightly bad, regardless of how you choose to experience it.  

So this holiday, I am going to be my own Valentine.  And not grudgingly, not because nobody else is willing.

I am going to buy myself a box of chocolates, or that pretty necklace I've been wanting.  And you should, too.  Take yourself out to dinner and a movie, buy a pretty new dress and go out on the town.

You are single, and that is fine.  There is no rhyme or reason, nothing you've done wrong

So stop worrying.

Be your own Valentine.

<3

Changes

Every semester, I write the same post saying that I'm moving back to school, starting another semester.

Always talking about needing change, and always avoiding the one inevitable change: real life.

I'm only a junior now, but in a year I'll be staring down the barrel of a gun: my last semester of college. The last few credits before I walk down an aisle holding my diploma.

And I'll be the first to admit that I'm terrified of that.

Of five, ten, twenty years in the future.  Of what I'll do with my life when I don't have text books and professors and homework and exams to occupy it my thoughts and my worries.  

Terrified of whether I'll love, or even like my job - because I've had my share of awful employers (or at least, one awful employer that makes up for the good ones).  And definitely I'm aware that I'll be making next to nothing, because in all honesty what do print journalists make anyway?  But if I love it, that can make up for the cardboard box I'll be living in.  

Terrified of whether this single thing that I don't mind right now, might last long enough to start to bother me.  

Terrified of never making it out of this town.

Terrified of a million little things that 10 years from now I'll have forgotten.

But I think those fears have quieted over the past year.

I've found myself freelancing...and finding that I really to enjoy it.

I've started to look forward to the diploma, rather than shove it to the back of my mind where all the things I don't think about reside (okay, not completely, but it's a start).  

I think I'm ready for this - more ready than I can say I was a year ago...five, ten, twenty years ago (can a one-year-old be ready?).  

I'm ready for the post-college world, ready to tackle it and worry about some new things.

<3

Reasons to Smile

Last week, I wrote that one of my resolutions for 2013 is to make this a beautiful year; whether it be by making myself healthier, by taking more photos, or by spending more time with friends - there are a million ways to make 2013 an incredible year.

And because this little space on the internet is such a big part of my life, some of that spills over into my blog.  So starting today, I'd like to take time every Saturday to talk about some of the things that give me a reason to smile throughout the week.

*

Over the last couple of weeks, I've found a lot more time to spend with friends. I head back to school in a couple weeks, and it's been great to see the people I don't get to for months at a time.

* 

I had my first news article published today in a local paper.  It felt awesome to see my name in the paper.

*

The weather has been beautiful so far this weekend!  It feels like it's in the 50s at least right now, and tomorrow is supposed to reach into the 60s!

*

Good books.  It sounds like such a small thing, but a good book sticks with me.

*

So what about you?  What's happened this week that gave you a reason to smile?

<3

Nostalgia

I have a tendency to become nostalgic for things I haven't yet finished, always in the final hours of my time there.  

In high-school, I spent the entirety of my senior year nostalgic for the hallways and the locker and the lunch room that I had become so accustomed to.  For the friends I spent so much time with, and the notebooks we passed back and forth - a diary we shared with one another, where we wrote so many stories of our lives amidst so many random thoughts.  

On day trips to Wildwood, I spend the car ride home reminiscing about a trip that isn't quite over yet.  Remembering all the things we laughed about, and how cold the water was when we first stepped in.  

While walking around campus the other day, on my way to Starbucks and class, I became nostalgic for something else that I haven't left yet.

I became nostalgic for a tree in my school's quad that blooms every spring: first into an abundance of pink flowers and then, as spring turns to summer, to beautiful green leaves as the flowers fall to the ground around its trunk.

Despite being early December, it was 60 degrees in Pennsylvania, and I think the weather tricked my brain into thinking it was spring.  And that my tree should be blooming.

I'm entering finals week for my 5th semester at college, and reality has been catching up with me for the past few months that my time here is almost finished.

And as I walked to class that day, anticipating the day when my tree will, once again, bloom, I remembered the first time I photographed that tree.  And I tried to imagine the last time that I will, a little over a year from now.

And I became nostalgic for all the buildings I've had class in over the last couple of years.  For the elevators that never work, and for the beautiful stories behind some of our buildings.

And I knew that, if I come back in 12 years for my reunion, these buildings will still be here.  Because they have history.

Not just for me, but for the first women to study education here.  Or for the runaway slaves who used the basements beneath our classrooms to hide in.  Or for the person for whom our new library is named.

Or at least, the ghosts of these buildings will remain.  Even as they take down old buildings to replace them with newer architecture, or replace the sculpture in the center of the quad with a new one, the memories of these buildings will remain.

Just as the memory of my tree will.

<3

In Apparent Response to My Earlier Post...

The other day, I wrote to you about my fear of the world that I'm going to find myself a part of soon.

And now, as I count the minutes before I leave for my night out, I'm watching Vlogbrothers Videos on Youtube (seriously...you should watch them), and this one from 2011 came on.

It was an open letter to 2011 graduates.

I listened to it as though it were a letter to me.

<3

Hope for the Future

Most people spend the eve of their 21st birthday at a bar, counting down the minutes until midnight so that the bartender can serve them their first legal drink.  They count shots the way that in previous years, family members had counted punches.  Counting until they reach the number of years they've been alive, and then beyond that until they can't swallow one more buttery nipple.    

I didn't do any of that.

Instead, I had a nervous breakdown while my mom and cousin watched, unsure of how best to handle the situation.  

I sat in my adolescent bed, crying in between choked out explanations of why 21 was so terrifying.  Explanations that probably made no sense to them, but which I defended at every turn anyway.

At three minutes after midnight, while others would have been choking down their third or fourth shot, I was standing in my parents' shower silently crying because I needed to be alone.  I thought that if I could get away from my family for just a little while, I could rationalize with myself, do the math in my head of how I would be okay.  Of how my degree wouldn't be useless after all.  

Instead, I wrote a novel in my head.  Or at least the introduction to one.

Because writing is what I've always done.  And what would I do with my life if not that?

For months I'd been quietly biting my nails while reading articles about the ever-increasing unemployment rate, or taking notes from my professors on how the newspaper industry is dying more each day.  

I'd learned in one class that reporters make roughly $35,000 a year.  Is that even minimum wage, I'd thought to myself, unable to actually calculate whether or not it was.  I simply resigned myself to working two or three jobs, at least one of which would have nothing to do with my degree in communications and journalism.  

By the time November rolled around though, I'd started to realize that I may not even be able to find one job in my chosen career track.  Every day I picked up the Inquirer, it felt thinner, less substantial.  With fewer articles every day, what would be left for me to write?

   I wrote this as though it were years ago.  As though I'm 27 now, living comfortably in a city apartment, with a job I love.  

   I'm still only 21 though.  This was only a week ago, and with only three semesters of college left, I'm still terrified about the future.  

   I'm calmer now, but maybe that's what a hot shower does.  That, and rationalizing with yourself that maybe you will have to wait tables for a few more years, or maybe forever.  Maybe it will always have to supplement what you love.

   Or maybe it's just hope.  I know in my heart that this isn't a movie, and unemployment won't drop to some magical number by 2014.  I know that it's going to be hard and I still want to cry.  

   But I'm going to keep hoping.  

Does anybody who's still reading this have a story about finding the job they love?  Or do you work in a job you don't quite enjoy, but do what you love on the side?

<3

PS...I know I disappeared for a while there.  It's only been a few months, but it feels like much longer.  A lot has happened since August, and I want to share it with you all.  

I hope you're all still here to listen.

Moving On

It's the end of summer, and I'm feeling the familiar itch.

The need to travel...to move, and be somewhere that isn't here anymore.  Tomorrow, I move into my dorm for my Junior year of college.

I spent the majority of my summer being terrified, because being a junior means being halfway through college...halfway to the real world where I have no idea how to even begin to find a career, even with four years of college under my belt.

But it's August.  Tomorrow I move in.  And I'm so ready; so ready to move on to somewhere new, even if it's not really new and I won't be there for too much longer.

All my life I've needed to move around, or at least for as long as I can remember.  I always pictured myself living in a city like New York, where everything is always different and I'd never recognize the people I see on the street.  Where I can simply turn a corner and feel like I'm somewhere entirely new, change my outfit and be a new person.  

I've always liked beginnings because it marks the start of something new.

Tomorrow, I begin my third year of college.  And I can't wait.

<3

Happy

I'm a writer at heart, and through every inch of my body.

At night, I dream of the words I'd write if I were awake.  

My waitress book is filled with half written ideas for stories that will never find their way to filled pages of my slanted writing.  

When a professor mentions that the class will consist primarily of papers, I feel a thrill of excitement where the other students groan in almost physical pain.  

So it's always confused me that when I'm so happy I could burst, or have something to say about my own life or to someone in my life, or somebody is upset...words escape me.  

The thoughts bounce around incoherently and never come out right...so that instead I stare blankly like a woman that can't use words.

I can write you a story about a couple that is not me and the words will flow beautifully.  But in my own life when asked to respond to something, I'm lost for words.  

But I am happy.  

So very happy.

Day 74

<3

Disappearing Act

Over the past couple of weeks since my disappearance from this blog, I've had SO much going on.

And I feel like I owe you an explanation, at least a little one, because I had plans for posts.

Primarily, I've been busy with work.  But it's been more than that.  

Life just gets in the way sometimes, and I'll be honest...I've loved every minute of it.

Instead of telling you what's been going on though, I'll give you some pictures.

Day 71

No matter where I end up in life...I think the Philadelphia skyline will always be one of the most beautiful things I've seen

Day 72

Say what you want about Philadelphia fans, and certainly I can't pretend I know anything about baseball.  But I do know that these players love each other, and the game.  How many major league teams run into each other's arms when they win a simple regular-season game?

Over the past couple of weeks, there have been babies born, and parties planned for those still on their way.  Relationships have been formed, and old ones rekindled, while those that never left have carried on.  

As the final weeks of summer wind down, and I get ready for my Junior year of college, I'm loving every minute of the sunshine - whether I've photographed them or not, little or small.

<3