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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