i let the day go by. i always say goodbye.
On Thursday I will no longer be a college student. This may be my last blog post to you, my patient readers.
Now that it’s down to the end I can’t even summon a sadness — it’s matter-of-fact, the way it ought to be. I mourned last week and now I’m ready, almost, to step off into the haze. It’s happening. How crazy.
Once upon a time, when I was a first-year student, I took French II at 8 a.m. I almost slept through my first test and so I did badly and cried a lot. I also cried when I had to do homework past 7 p.m. because I thought it was just too much work for one human being to handle. (Could I imagine myself doing that now? Well, sleeping up until five minutes before the test, maybe. But would I have studied for it the night before? Absolutely. Also, now I have to laugh hysterically at my first-year conception of what a proper workload looks like.)
The moral of that story is that I’ve learned a lot. I can handle the world beyond Messiah College as a real grown-up in the workforce. Right?
I’m grateful that my season of change coincides with Advent; what better time to face a whole new life than in a season of waiting, hoping, longing, preperation, and absolute delight? And it culminates in presence, the real presence of something precious in the bodily life. The incarnation is the ultimate example of truth needing a physical manifestation rooted in this beautiful, crazy world. And isn’t that what our artwork should do — bring some aspect of truth into a physical body? So it’s an affirmation of our work as artists, too.
So yes — I’m going to step out and say that it’s a good time to be an artist and it’s a good time to be in flux and it’s even a good time to be looking for a job in an economic recession. Because I think I have faith that it will end with delight.
Lest you think I run on faith alone, I do have a few plans — a good friend and advocate found me a lovely place to live for a few weeks until I get married. Starting next week I plan to move into this temporary housing and hunt for jobs. I plan to relax a little. I plan to do some freelance writing (yes! Since my degree apparently DID prepare me for some profitable occupation, does that make me a success story?). I plan to apartment-hunt for my permanent life. I plan to work on my origami skills and figure out all those last wedding details that I’ve been ignoring for so long. I plan on drawing like a fiend. I plan on calling all my friends and catching up on these last tumultuous months.
And I plan on celebrating advent.
ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only. begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin; Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit ever, one God, world without end. Amen.
and the magic numbers are. . .
10 days until I graduate
17 days until Christmas
19 days until I go home again
40 days until I get married
How long until I find an apartment or a job? That’s what I’d most love to know. But that’s what heaven isn’t telling.
Now I sympathize with the wild-eyed looks my contemporaries got last year as Commencement approached. How do we find jobs? It said. We’re too grown up to move home again for long but how does one go about finding a place to live? Leases? Utilities? Was there a class on that? Don’t get me wrong. Many of my friends had jobs waiting for them after graduation or found something they enjoy doing within a month or two. But that initial jump into completely uncertain, unknown territory — that’s what gets us looking like we haven’t slept since 1985.
John Skillen, the professor who oriented us to Orvieto, said, “Give yourself permission to feel whatever you’re feeling, find space for that, and then move on to the next thing.” Pretty good advice for cross-cultural adventures and for graduating, too. Leave room for the nostalgia, the fear of losing the community which makes college unique, the fear of starvation in the streets, the fear of waitressing for the rest of your life, the joy of not having homework any more, the euphoria at gaining such a hard-earned degree. And then? Move on to finding an apartment, looking at help wanted ads, and packing up all your boxes.
Leave time especially to hang out with the people who made college special — invite your favorite professor to have coffee (unanimously voted the beverage of choice for academics), let those last community dinners stretch on for three hours, ignore that last writing assignment in favor of a game of cards. The character development of Huck Finn won’t stick with you for more than a year. Good friends? Well, hopefully longer than that.
Thousands of graduates before us have transitioned away from college without mental breakdowns, right? It must be possible. Wish me luck, and I’ll wish it your way, too.
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