Yoga pants, hummus, and blue tape. If I had to describe my semester with items, these would be it. I very rarely wear actual pants anymore, and I am caught cruising around campus in yoga pants 9 times out of 10 thanks to a marvelous schedule of art classes wedged between dance and pilates. Careful not to mistake this for sarcasm, because truly this is a dream come true. I love that I don’t have a solid block of lecture classes where I practice my talent of falling asleep sitting up and that I get to be moving throughout my day. However, I did have a friend see me in the library on a rare occasion where I was wearing normal clothes. She told me “Why, this is the first time I’ve seen you in clothes!” followed by “oh dear, that makes you sound like a stripper.” when she addressed the general public by saying “Don’t worry folks! This girl, not a stripper!”
During the week,
hummus has become a prevalent food group in my diet. This is both by choice,
but also out of convenience. Not only do I love hummus, but it has been made
readily available to me in bulk amounts. I received a gift card a couple months
ago for hummus from one of my favorite stores. Then for Christmas, my father
gave me a giftcard to a local restaurant for ten tubs of hummus with varying flavors
from jalapeño to lemon zest to chocolate. If that wasn’t enough, the campus
coffee shop started carrying hummus and pretzels in convenient containers for
on the go. I also recently discovered Trader Joe’s soy and flaxseed tortilla
chips, which complement hummus in just the right way. It's really ridiculous the amount of hummus I've consumed in the past couple months.
I have been
blessed with the opportunity to be a resident assistant (RA) for my final
semester at Whitworth. I was so excited to be able to have this job! And I love
it more and more every day I have it. How many people can say they get paid to
play party games and make new friends? I have the sweetest boss who inspires me
to be better and go outside of my comfort zone. I have an amazing team that
supports me and shows me lightyears of patience. I have the funniest women living
on my hall you’ll ever meet who welcomed me in so warmly and readily. This job
has opened many doors for me and continues to open my eyes to both my
weaknesses and my strengths in a very healthy, challenging way. I’ve used more
blue tape though than I think I ever have in my life—including the time I made
a blueprint of The Office’s office on my dorm room ceiling, lining desks and
walls with blue tape. In the dorms, we aren’t allowed to use masking or duct or
scotch tape to get things to stick, so we are left to fare with blue painter’s
tape. Mostly putting up posters in bathroom stalls and on doors to campus
buildings, but often it’s just to make anything stick. I’ve used it to lessen
the spill caused from a leaky faucet until maintenance could fix it for real.
This season of
my life is a tricky one. I am unbelievably happy with my jobs, my classes, and
my relationships. However, this bliss is interrupted with staccatos of utter
terror, accentuated with self-doubt, insecurity, and uncertainty about the future.
I have been in school for 17 years of my life. I have spent roughly 9 months
out of each year going to school Monday thru Friday, with wonderful little weekend
breaks in between. A little bit of summer vacation, spring break, and Christmas
break. I have come home with homework to do, extracurricular activities on top
of that. I have seen my friends in class, studied for tests, written papers,
destroyed a rainforest of trees with all the scratch paper I used for
equations. I have a system of organization that I have developed for each
school year and semester, with binders and agendas and post-it notes. I’ve
known exactly where I would be , what I would be doing, from kindergarten
through college. While I hesitate to say that I am especially good at school,
at least I understand it. I know what is expected of me, when to ask questions,
when to study hard and when not to. And now all that is coming to a close. And
what lies ahead is not only uncertain, but completely foreign to me.
I cope with most things that make me feel uncomfortable and vulnerable by bolting. I will run and run and run from a situation, a person, or problem. However, this never fixes anything, but rather makes things more miserable. This is what I have been doing for months about the whole job application and figuring my life out.
Basically this is how I feel about entering adulthood.
I felt that I wasn’t supposed to rush into
graduate school immediately after getting my bachelor’s, mostly because I have
no idea what I want to do. I have some ideas—work for a science center, quality
control, go into research—but in the long run, my career goals are hazy. As someone
who is driven by direct goals, not having a direction leaves me ashamedly
unmotivated. There are a couple factors coming into play that don’t help this:
a.)
senioritis. People say things
like “I’ve had senioritis since I was a freshmen” to which I respond with a
pseudo-grumpy-cat demeanor: No. You don’t. You have no idea what senioritis
really is until you are a senior. I thought I had encountered it before. It is
like high school graduation, but then I could afford to flounce my way through
the last months because I knew at least where I was going afterward. But this
time around is a bit different. It is crazy when your entire graduating class
is slowly slumping lower and lower in their desks as the weeks draw closer to
graduation and we realize that school doesn’t seem to be such a big deal when
you have reality looming just around the corner, chock full of bills and
cubicles and responsibility threatening to destroy the liberation of your
college years.
b.)
stuck in the present. I am
enjoying this semester so much. Especially being an RA, because it’s one of
those things that you get as much out as you put in. I have been doing my best
to throw myself into the job and try my best to make that my focus. But at the
expense of really thinking and preparing for my future. A motto I’ve been
living by this semester is “Love the time you have, not the time you wish you
had.” I have such a small amount of time left before I leave the Whitworth
community I have come to love and adore, I can’t be bothered with thoughts
afterwards for fear of diminishing the value of the now.
c.) perspective. I really have no
idea what I want to do next, but I know where I want to eventually end up,
years down the road. My ultimate goal is to have my own home, with a yard and
some chillins running around, with a man who loves me and who doesn’t mind when
I change the dresser drawer knobs or the color of the living room walls three
times a year. A job I love would be nice, but in fact, I would be just as happy
being a housewife (sorry Mom). There are jobs I would love, and things I am
passionate about that I would like to pursue. But ultimately a career is not
how I want to define myself. Nor by my education, nor by my salary, nor by any
worldly means. And it is difficult to gather up your passions and make sense of
them, and formulate them into a job that is meaningful. There are mountains to
climb before I achieve this dream, and I am in no hurry to get there. But it
does make choosing the next step difficult when you realize in the end it doesn’t
matter too much.
I think the Cheshire
cat explains my current state best: “If
you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” Although I do
know long term where I want to end up, there are roughly 39803259083 different
paths I could take to get there. Yes, it’s scary and unknown and often you find
yourself taking different paths than everyone else around you. And that’s okay.
Comparison is the thief of joy, said Teddy Roosevelt, so stop it. Nothing gets
accomplished if you are too paralyzed with fear to move. So get up, shake off
the fears that are tying up your hands, and just take a step. You can handle one
at a time. Don’t overthink, because you there are many things in life you
cannot control. Accept, listen, laugh, cry, dance, look stupid, work hard, but
most of all, MOVE. Trust that something bigger than yourself is at work, and all you need to do is take a step.
