Life after graduation

Long time no see to all of you blog readers! I know that I haven’t been the most frequent of blog posters, and for that I apologize to my readership. (Assuming I still have a readership) Well, it sure has been quite a while since my last foray into the blogosphere and a lot has indeed happened since then.

For one, I graduated. Yup! Look at me, properly commenced (if you can use that term) and minted with the title of “Class of 2011.” To be honest though, other than a tradition filled ceremony filled with pomp and circumstance, I don’t think it’s really sunk in for me that I’ve left William and Mary at all. Perhaps, when August comes along and it turns out that I don’t have to go back to Williamsburg for the first time in four years, it’ll finally hit me.

But yeah, I graduated, with a double major in Government and Chinese Studies no less and my grandparents even drove half the country to watch me with proud eyes. I hadn’t seen their faces light up that brightly in a very long time.

So yeah…I graduated….NOW WHAT?

Trust me, the previous three paragraphs are what I’ve been mulling over constantly ever since Commencement Day May 15th, 2011.

It seems almost weird. I feel like, all this time, my life had been planned out for me: go to school, study hard, pass SATs, go to college…that I never even realized what I would do after the guided tunnel that was my education finally let me out into the open.

I don't think it's sunk in for me quite yet what life has in store for me.

I will admit, I was and still am to say the least, dumbfounded. Here I am, bottom of the social food chain again, diploma in hand and ready to change the world…except…how?

All around me, I look at my graduating class and see a hodgepodge of mixed emotions. Some, with deadly intent, know what they want to do with their lives, know what they want to become and how to become it…perhaps that’s what makes them so successful. She wants to be a lawyer and will start law school in the fall, he wants to be a banker and will start working for Morgan-Stanley come July….

While others are just as lost as I am, thinking to themselves, “is this really what I want to become?” and second guessing. I guess 16 years of schooling never did prepare us for this moment…And let me tell you, that feeling and pressure is ridiculously scary.

But while talking to a close friend of mine, he explained to me one very important thing. Right now, in our lives, is the only time in our entire lives, where we’ll have the opportunity and freedom to do anything we choose. And in the end, it’s better to take your time, and choose a life that you want to live, rather than a life you need to live.

And it was these words that stuck with me, and got me over the stress of not knowing what tomorrow may bring. And it’s also these words, which I hope will also help others who may be in a similar predicament as me to get past the fear of not knowing about tomorrow.

I take pride in knowing that what separates me from those individuals who know what they want, is that now may be the only time in my entire life where I’ll get to take a few steps back, and ready myself for the sprint of life up ahead.