What I Learned From Working in a Toxic Work Environment (And Quitting)

I quit my job yesterday. And I don't have another one lined up yet. I know how that sounds, and I promise you, there is not a person on this earth more aware of the urgency of the situation than I am. But enough was enough.

I stayed at my job for eight weeks. It only took me about three days to realize what a mess I had gotten myself into. I guess it took that much longer for my patience to finally wear thin. It paid my rent for two months, so it was not an entire waste of my time. And of course, being the comprehensive learner, evolution-of-character believer that I am, I know that no time is wasted if it taught you a lesson. And boy, did it.

First of all, you should know, that my intent in writing this piece is not to bash or demean anyone in any way, especially because a large part of why I finally quit was because I was demeaned and berated myself, so I know how it feels. My objective is never to hate. It is simply therapeutic for me to cut the jumbled mess of thoughts and feelings loose from my mind and my heart, so that's what I'm doing. And of course, to paraphrase my homegirl T-Swift, "If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better."

So. I've had a rough time of it since graduation (see previous blog post). I have landed and consequently quit three jobs. Three is the number of people required for a person to murder before they are technically classified as a serial killer. I guess it follows that I would be a serial employee, in that case. It isn't like me. The last job I consider to be a "real job" (and a much more worthwhile investment of my time and energy) lasted me three years in college. Now I've gone through three in six months. It's depressing. But it's also been necessary. Because as we all know very well by now, I refuse to settle for mediocre. I won't do it. Even if that means making things extremely difficult for myself in the process. I know. Sometimes I am even too stubborn for myself. But you know what? I always thank myself in the end for standing up for what I deserve and loving and respecting myself enough to do what needs to be done. And I have absolutely no trouble sleeping at night. (Mostly because I'm exhausted.) So I guess it's not all that bad.

I can tolerate a lot of crap. I grew up learning how to keep my mouth closed and my thoughts to myself, as a survival mechanism when necessary. I am a lover and a giver, not a fighter nor a taker. I naturally try to keep the peace. Whether to blame my aversion to drama or my hippie mother, I don't know. The point is I prefer not to fight. However, I equally refuse to be used or abused. For that, we can blame my Irish heritage or my older sister's bullying, either one. Point being: I can take a lot. But when I've had enough, I've had enough. I reached "enough" this week.

Throughout the course of my two-month employment, I witnessed and experienced many things which, at the very least annoyed me, and at most, simply felt wrong in the pit of my stomach. Either way, I don't like to be annoyed, nor do I like my conscience bothering me. So my attitude, my demeanor, my entire personality began to change. It didn't take long for me to notice it, and it took even shorter for me to want to change the situation I found myself in. But I had bills to pay. So I waited. As a human being, my tendency to gravitate toward becoming complacent was growing. But as someone who respects herself and expects respect from others in return, I was growing ever more restless against the metaphorical chains I found myself writhing against. It was all becoming too much for me to handle. Something had to change.

At this job, I was mistreated. But not just me. Every single employee in the office was subject to abuse in the form of verbal assaults, sudden mood swings, subtle misogyny and elitism, denied bonus checks for our hard work, and just about any other shady way that a sleazeball on a power trip could think of to manipulate or control his employees to remind them of their place under his greasy thumb. Now, I can tell you, I don't know which parent I inherited this trait from, maybe 50% from both, but I do not like to be controlled. (Just ask Mom or Dad, and they'll tell you.) I need freedom, I need trust, I need to be allowed to be human and have space to make mistakes and forgiveness for when I inevitably do. I need for my employer to recognize our common humanity and, at the very least, to respect it. The most fundamental misunderstanding between my former employer and myself was that I mistakenly assumed that all people regarded such things like respect as a given. I should've known better than to assume.

To add insult to injury, over the course of the 39 days that I dragged myself out of bed in the morning to suffer through yet another shift, I was paid minimum wage. It's one thing to be treated like dirt and at least make good money tolerating it. People do that all the time. (Not that I recommend it either, but that's beside the point.) But not me, oh no. When I do things, I like to do them big. So when I make a misstep in my career path, I like to get a two-fer and make sure I'm spat on everyday and paid the lowest amount of money that I am legally entitled to earn. Good grief, Alyssa.

So, for the folks keeping score at home: I was verbally abused on a daily basis, when co-workers who were long since desensitized to such flagrant language dismissed it as simply "his personality," I feared the man because of his well-practiced intimidating physical stance, I was the only person in the place besides this woman-hating narcissist who held a college degree, I was also one of only three employees who has never seen the inside of a penitentiary, and I was being paid $7.25 per hour! Glad we're all caught up.

Due to the fact that I was earning incredibly less than I had any business earning, it was necessary for me to start looking elsewhere for other various forms of employment. Because regardless of income, monthly bills do not change. I started Uber driving for a few weeks. A friend of a friend hired me to help out on her food truck a few days a week. I sold some things I had sitting in my closet. And I was completely demoralized because of my work environment. I could feel myself changing, and not in a good way. It was a rough time to be Alyssa.

Oh, and about picking up shifts on the food truck: most of those shifts were during lunch, which required me to ask my boss for extended lunch breaks a total of FOUR times. Jesus Christ, you'd think I was asking him if I could borrow his Ferrari. Anyway, asking for time off that equaled a grand total of five hours over two pay periods is what resulted in me leaving his office crying the first time. That really should have been the moment I quit. But as one of my former co-workers at this establishment said numerous times after she left the job and returned twice, "I'm a glutton for punishment." I guess.

Then I told him that I would be going to France for about two and a half weeks over Christmas. Now, granted, that is not something that any employer wants to hear. No duh. But it is still something that happens in life occasionally, and it's not exactly like at $7.25 an hour where I am talked down to every single day, I'm risking losing a high-paying corporate job with benefits and paid holiday. Not exactly a hard decision to make. When I left his office crying that time, it was pretty much the moment I had decided my fate and my "goals with the company," as I was later interrogated about and expected to valiantly defend. (To which I replied that I would love to keep the job if I know I'm not going to be verbally abused, by the way.)

Then there was yesterday. I finally did it. I'd had enough, well before he told me that I had "an attitude" yesterday morning, so I decided to quit. Because nobody gets to talk to me like that and think it's okay. Because what we allow to happen in our interpersonal relationships is what will continue. Because what we accept is what we are conveying to others we are comfortable being treated like. And because if nothing else, I should not leave my employer's office in tears three times in the span of two months of employment.

After being told three days previously that if I am going to expect to be able to be gone for three weeks in December, that I "might as well pack up and go home," I was met with a much different tune when I actually said the words,"I quit." This time I was told that he wished I would "reconsider" because he had "such high hopes for me". Yeah, right. When I am consistently treated like crap for eight weeks straight, that pretty much tells me where I lie in your priorities and what my value is to you. And when I am continually pushed away, and I finally decide to accept this fact and turn my back to walk away, don't ask me back. Once I have decided it's time for me to leave, I'm not coming back. I've been witness to far too many abusive relationships to fall for that lame power move from an insecure old man. I sound like I think I'm better than him, and that's because I do.

Immediately following his plea for reconsideration came his guilt tripping and reassuring me that it "will be interesting" if I think I have any chance of finding another employer who will treat me better than him and this company. The he lectured me that "in the business world" I need to work a full 40 hours a week, as if I am some kind of newbie teenager quitting her first job, or if I were someone who has been handed a single thing in her life. And let's not forget his repeatedly demanding to know exactly why I am quitting, and if he is solely responsible for it; as if his little power trips and temper of a two-year-old being the straw that broke my back was somehow going to satisfy his sick craving to feel accomplished in his 70+ years of life, verbally abusing a 22-year-old girl. What a man.

So I did it. I quit. I left. I spent the day cleaning up my drawers and my computer, I clocked out, and I never looked back. I flipped the place off later that night when I drove by on my way to work the food truck, because we're all a little petty at times and the emotions were still fresh in my mind. But you get the idea. Adios. Sayonara. Adieu.

The title of this post is "What I Learned From Working in a Toxic Work Environment (And Quitting)," so I guess I had better tell you what exactly that is, instead of just using it as a metaphorical punching bag for my emotions and a word vomit receptacle. What I learned is this: never again. Never, ever again, will I settle for less than I deserve. Never, ever again, will I allow myself to be treated like dog poop scraped off the bottom of some rich man's knockoff Italian leather shoe. Never, ever again, will I accept working for a wage so low that I have to seek supplemental work elsewhere, then get reprimanded for my attempt to survive because it cuts into the hours someone else thinks they own in full, for a measly $7.25 apiece. Never, ever again, will I be so utterly and preposterously disrespected and spat upon when I know damn good and well that I am capable of doing better and that I deserve more. Never again.

I did not pour hundreds -- nay, thousands -- of hours of my life into college courses; I did not graduate with thousands of dollars' worth of student loan debt tied to my social security number; I did not prop my eyeballs open through boring three-hour long night classes about macroeconomics and supply chain management, in order to be treated in such a way as I have been since the beginning of October. I would rather be one of the many (although hopefully temporarily) unemployed recent college graduates, than to allow myself to be subjected to such abuse and mistreatment ever again. I sound proud. I am. I know what I deserve. And what I learned from this experience was that I sure as hell deserve a lot better than that. Never again.

I've got to do what makes me happy, and part of that means also not doing the things that don't make me happy. So no. Never, ever again.

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Happiness, Stepping Stones, and Job Interviews: A Girl Who Refuses to Settle (But Still Has Bills to Pay)

I have been on six job interviews in the last five months. And I have been offered the job after every single one of them.

That sounds great, at first. Until the logical question eventually comes to your mind, which is, why has this girl gone on so many job interviews in such a short period of time? The short answer is because I wasn't happy. Obviously. Something was amiss somewhere between all of these jobs and my heart. The connection just wasn't making a full circuit, when I thought it should've been. Of these six job interviews in the last five months (averaging out to 1.2 new jobs every month, by the way), I have accepted -- and worked at least a short while -- at three of them. However, the way my life went did not average out to 1.2 new jobs every month. Instead, it went something like: a new job for three months, a new job for two weeks, a new job for four days. So really, since the beginning of September, my life has been a little more hectic than usual. Allow me to explain.

Rewind to the beginning of May, two weeks before final exams and graduation. I knew I desperately needed to find a new job, because I would soon no longer be a student, and therefore I could no longer have a student position. More importantly, I would soon have that coveted college diploma, and that meant I should probably have a career to go along with it. So I set out to see what I could find in the scary world of big girl jobs in Wichita.

I'll quickly skim over the beginning parts, because they're not the real focus of this story.

First, I applied to a refugee crisis center where I would be helping those people who were coming to seek solace in the United States. Amazing. Made my humanitarian heart feel good. I went to the interview and nailed it. I would've accepted it too, had it not been for the meek stipend offered as pay which averaged out to five dollars per hour with the possibility of working more than 40 hours a week.

A week later, I did a preliminary phone interview for a position at a law firm that I ultimately ended up accepting. The following week, I went in for the face-to-face interview and underwent a series of questions printed off by an intimidating attorney. I left feeling good about it.

A few hours later, I sat down in front of this very laptop where I am typing now and conducted a Skype interview with a Peace Corps representative. I smiled and talked for an hour about why I would be a great candidate for volunteering in Senegal for 27 months, starting next February. I felt good about this one, too. Until I decided at the end of June that moving to Senegal for more than two years was something my heart no longer yearned for, and, heartbroken and sorry, I graciously declined their job offer. (See previous blog for more details.)

Two days later, the day before graduation, I was offered the job at the law firm. I took it. I didn't have any other offers on the table which would pay as well, and I needed something to help pay for car insurance and groceries. So I did it. Then I hopped on a plane to Europe a few days later and forgot all about adult responsibilities until I returned at the beginning of June.

I stayed at that job for three months and three days. It was an alarmingly short amount of time for me to stay at a job. I felt like crap about quitting it. But I knew I would feel more like crap if I stayed. I had started in June and made it through the first two months without thinking too much. I was mostly just answering phones and filing court documents. Wax on, wax off. Day in, day out.

But at the end of July, I took a week-long vacation that I had been planning since the night I hatched the plan in Paris -- back in May. I went to Boston and New York City and aside from the few times a colleague texted me asking where to find client files, I didn't spend a single second thinking about work. Not until my plane landed back in Wichita on Sunday night and I immediately remembered reality was lying in wait for me the next morning.

This was the week when something changed inside of me. Before this moment, I had been mostly fine with my job. There were things I disliked about it, of course, and certain times when I wished I was doing something more exciting. But for the most part, to this point at least, it was okay. But when I came back from New York, my brain was still on vacation. My heart most certainly was, as well. My boss was on vacation this week, and her absence was something I was not exactly struggling with. My co-worker and I were the only ones in the office, and I came home on every lunch break to see my boyfriend (who was here for only a week) making us lunch and watching the Olympics in my apartment. Those were the hardest days to go back to clock in. The following Monday, he was back across the Atlantic and my boss was back in her office. That's when the switch inside of me flipped.

I had decided that I was no longer happy, living a meaningless existence behind my desk, stapling papers and stamping envelopes. I had a college degree and self-respect, and I deserved more than what I was getting paid! So I started looking around online and I applied to some jobs that I thought might interest me. This is where the fun really starts.

I quickly got responses back from two separate businesses, both of whom really liked my application and resume, and who wanted to schedule interviews with me. Great! This all happened the next business day following my online application. So I made appointments. One on Thursday, one on Friday.

The interview on Thursday was a colossal waste of my time, as I spent my entire lunch break sitting in a waiting room with a dozen other applicants, waiting to be called in one by one to some guy's office to be briefed on the "job" at hand, as we listened to the receptionist sing along to Nicki Minaj songs on the radio. Towards the end of the hour that I sat in that chair, I decided this was ridiculous, told the receptionist I had to go back to work, and left. They never missed me.

However, the Friday interview was much more promising. I went in the morning and I met with the director of a new marketing firm located in a big office building downtown. Wow, I can remember thinking, this is it. I walked in, took the elevator up to their office, and waited nervously in my best business professional heels and blazer.

I shook this young man's hand -- he was only two and a half years older than me -- and looked out over the incredible view of downtown Wichita he had out of the giant window behind his desk. To say I felt hopeful would be an understatement. I told the man that I was looking for something else because the work I was doing now was simply unfulfilling -- I wasn't happy. Great, he promised me, this will be an exciting job for you. By the end of the twenty minute interview, we shook hands and settled on a date for me to return and do a second-round interview. I had nailed it.

I went back for the second-round interview, after having made a last-minute Target run the night before, buying a new pair of slacks and a new blouse specifically for the occasion. This is where I met two of the people who would be my new co-workers. They were two guys around my age, and one was engaged and another had a baby on the way. They seemed like nice enough guys and they were certainly very relatable, as far as needing to make more money goes. I could tell things were going well in this interview, and when I left I metaphorically crossed my fingers. I had pissed off my boss pretty bad by leaving work for this appointment, so I was hoping they'd call me back the next day with the job offer, as they'd said they would if they wanted to hire me. And they did.

I accepted the offer and the following day, I gave my typed and signed letter of resignation to my boss at the law firm. I allowed for a little less than two weeks -- as much as was possible between the moment I found out I got the job and the date the new place wanted me to start. She was inconvenienced but understanding, and she said she was sad to see me go. This turned out to be the beginning of a domino effect of quitting-and-beginning-new-jobs that has plagued my life for the last month.

I reported for duty at the agreed date and time in this big office building which would now be my new employer. I still wasn't really sure what I was going to be doing, but I was sure it was going to be amazing. (Spoiler alert: I was wrong.) On the first day, the people in charge gave me and three other new girls a clipboard, a polo, and a pitch to memorize in the next two days. I learned I was going to be going out to Walmart and talking to customers to try to sell them cable service. (Read: standing on my feet for at least seven hours a day, wearing slacks and the same polo everyday, working late and on weekends, and bothering people who would really rather not be bothered.)

Even for the amount of money promised to me in commission for each sale and the "safety net" option of minimum wage multiplied by 40 hours a week, this didn't seem to be worth it for all of the time I was putting into it, not including the amount of gas I was using every day to drive to different locations. It didn't take me long to realize I hated it, and I needed to find something else to pay my bills.

I had sent out copies of my resume and cover letter to different travel agencies in the area about a month before this point, at the same time as I applied to this marketing firm. I decided to call them up on one of my days off and just touch base with each of them. Who knew, I thought, maybe they're still hiring. I made an appointment with one of the agencies for the following Monday -- which meant I only had to survive seven more days selling my soul to the devil.

Travel agencies seemed like such an obvious choice for me, because even though it probably doesn't really count as international business, it still has all the exciting parts of work that I love involved in it: namely traveling and helping people. That's really all the convincing I needed, coming from my recent history of filing court documents and pitching cable television sales in Walmart. I set the interview and prepared plenty of questions this time, to make sure I really knew just what I was getting myself into.

I went to the interview and, twenty minutes later, I walked out the door having already accepted the offer. I was going to start the following Monday. I had accepted this offer against what was perhaps my better judgment, which was telling me that the position paid entirely too little for someone with a college degree, that the location totally sucked, and that though this woman had hired me on the spot, she also reminded me strikingly of a woman I had just spent three years working with during college, and that's not exactly something that I'd say is a compliment. But I knew how I felt selling cable TV packages, and I knew how I felt researching flight tickets online, and I didn't need a college degree to tell the difference between the two. So I listened to my heart, instead of my screaming bank account, and I accepted the position -- and informed Kate afterward.

Two days later, I informed my boss at the marketing place that I was no longer interested in moving forward in the company, because I simply did not love the work, and I was sure that meant I was eventually going to hate it. I was completely honest, and it felt so good. I'm sure everyone was blind-sided by my decision, because I had just been promoted a few days earlier, but I explained that I stayed long enough to achieve this for the sake of the colleague who had hired me, and who would consequently be promoted himself. But as soon as I accomplished that, I was abandoning ship. I think my boss was confused by my choice, but he said he understood. I returned the clipboard and polo to him the next day.

Then I began the new job at the travel agency, and I was loving every single thing about it. I immediately hit it off with another employee who was close to my age, as she showed me around the office and taught me how to use the computer programs. It was great. I went to lunch on that first day (just three days ago) and as I left, I checked my emails on my phone. The owner from one of the other travel agencies had reached out to me and offered to set up a time for an interview to see if we would be a good fit for one another. I had only been on the clock at this new place for two and a half hours!

Thinking that perhaps this place would pay more per hour or offer a better commission rate, I decided that I had nothing to lose, and I replied with haste that I would love to meet with him and I could be available any time. He hadn't replied by Tuesday's lunch break, 24 hours later, so I called his office line. We chatted and he loved my enthusiasm, and later we decided on a time that would work for both of us on Thursday. I patiently waited out the rest of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning. Meanwhile, I was adjusting to my new job and learning more and more about the people I was working with -- not necessarily enjoying all of what I discovered.

However, I sure did love the work side of it, and I was quickly getting very excited every time I helped another agent research a flight or quote a cruise package. So at least this time, I could say that I didn't feel like I was selling my soul when I went in to work in the morning. Finally, I felt at least somewhat fulfilled and interested in what I was doing. My heart told me I was getting closer to something that made it very happy.

So today, I went to this interview with the owner of the other travel agency. My goodness, did we hit it off. We spent two hours talking and sharing insights on life and work. It was perfect. I felt like I had so many signs that this was finally where I wanted to be. He reminded me so much of my old boss from college, in all the best ways. I was thrilled. Until he told me it was commission only, with no such "safety net" option, even like what was offered at the marketing firm. Crap. He warned me that it would not be a profitable endeavor for the first few months, and that although he was certainly not trying to discourage someone who he thought would be a great agent, he did want to make me aware upfront of the kind of commitment I would be making if I chose to sign on the dotted line.

If I thought it had been heartbreaking to turn down the Peace Corps, or to quit my job at the law firm, or to drudge into a sales job I hated every day for two weeks, I had no idea the kind of heartbreak one could feel from finding the perfect job made exactly for them -- before realizing there is no way on earth that you could afford to continue existing and paying bills in the meantime before you could turn a profit for doing this thing you've come to realize you love.

I came home and called my mom and rambled on and on and on for almost twenty minutes about ways I thought I could make this work, and how impressed by me this man was, and how I had taken so many things as signs, and that I just really wanted to work there so badly I could taste it. And at the end of the conversation, I somehow just knew -- I had this feeling that it just wasn't going to work out. There is just no way I can possibly survive for up to six months until these commissions start rolling in, with no hourly wage, even if the commission I would be making would be 50% more than the commission I am making now.

There was just no way. Happiness has always been what best motivates me. But being able to pay my bills is a close second. And I guess that's just one of the tough facts of adulthood, also known as why so many people get so jaded, so soon.

So for now, at least, I will stay at the travel agency that hired me on the spot. There's certainly nothing wrong with learning and earning as much as you can where you're at, while you're there. Especially if you're a daydreamer like me, and always scheming the next plan anyway.


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I was talking to Kate about all of this career stuff last night. Kate, bless her, who had just returned to the country from the other side of the world and was suffering great jet lag, yet still listened to me whine and cry about my life for half an hour. And as per usual, I hung up the phone with Kate feeling like I had just read my own personalized fortune/horoscope/whatever nonsensical universal sign you believe.

I told Kate how I felt bad about the fact that I had moved around so many jobs in such a short amount of time. I said how unlike me this was, how Kate knew that, and that I thrive in situations of consistency and accountablity. I told her how I, more than my mother, my boyfriend, or her, was so exhausted from all of this up and down, in and out, first day/last day nonsense. I just want a routine, I told her. I want to be happy and I just want to make enough money to pay my bills.

And Kate told me this: "Don't worry. Everything before 25 is shitty. It gets better." 

Kate is pretty good with the witty one-liners that offer blunt wisdom that can only come from having lived life longer than me. I've come to expect them by this point in our relationship. That's probably part of the reason why I just know to call her now when I am freaking out about something like this.

Of course, I wouldn't heed her advice so much if it didn't already make perfect sense with what was going on inside of my own head at the time. In this instance, like many others before, it matched perfectly.

Kate pointed out to me that there are really two main groups of people who graduate college. She has been in the business of witnessing students graduate college for a while now, so I trust her opinion as an authority on the matter. She said she has seen it several times, and the two types of graduates are as follows:

1. The type of student who finds an internship sometime in the middle of college and gets a job which they can rely on to pay the bills AND which looks good on a resume. They are basically working full time by their last semester and when they graduate, they've already accepted the eventual job offer which they received when the time came to transition from college student into an active member of the adult workforce. They have a consistent, reliable form of income and a schedule which they have come to live by, and for the first little bit they're pretty well set saving towards their 401(k) and adulting like a professional.
2. Then there's the other group. They have a job during college, which may or may not be related to their major, and once they graduate they may kind of drift around a bit until they figure out exactly what it is that they want to do with all this adulthood they now have. They may not have a savings account, but they have a clear image of what they want and they don't mess around for too long putting up with anything less than what that image is. They move. They change. They evolve. They learn. That's not to say that the first group doesn't also do these things, but the second group does them at a more frequent rate than their counterparts. And in doing all of this moving and growing and exploring of their options, they open themselves up to opportunities that their counterparts may have missed, occupied by their routines and stability. By virtue of their constant changing, they learn to become more adaptable than their peers, who have yet to face such evolutionary challenges. Essentially, they prove Darwin's point.

Of course, I'm paraphrasing a bit, but that is essentially the message I took away from our conversation. To really drive her point home, Kate told me to look at these two types of people ten years after graduation. Sure, maybe the first group looks good on paper, ten years at the same company with a consistent contribution to their pension fund every two weeks. But maybe the members of the second group are a bit happier because they have explored their options and looked deep within themselves to ask the very important question, what do I want? Kate said that a lot of the time, ten years after graduation, the first group of people are unhappy because all they have done is the same work for ten years that they decided they wanted to do when they were 19 or 20 years old, when their brains were still developing them into who they are now. They've made a good income, but at what expense to their happiness? See where I'm going with this?

Now, a small disclaimer for those who are easily offended by my own personal opinion: Of course, that is not to say that every single college graduate fits explicitly and necessarily into one of those two groups I just illustrated. Of course people graduate with full-time positions offered to them and they are extremely happy AND make a good income. I am in no way saying that happiness and a steady job are mutually exclusive. Of course they're not. What I am saying is that by bumping around and getting scratched up a bit by the three jobs I've had in the last month, I have learned an inexplicable amount of knowledge and gained an immeasurable sum of experience, that I never in a million years would've known if I had stayed working at the very first job I got out of college, clocking in and clocking out, never bothering to ask myself what else I could do with my life, as is the case with many people complacent with their jobs, as described in the first group.

So, it has certainly been a tumultuous time for me, fresh out of college, during this student loan grace period. I feel as if, in many ways, I have learned a lot of things I couldn't have possibly learned while I was actually enrolled as a student. There certainly is something to be taken away from every life experience, no matter if it is good, bad, or indifferent.

I always envisioned my life as being that of a stable person with a reliable income, not that of someone who goes from one job to another to another within a month's time. But you know, I have also always seen myself as someone who pursues happiness above all else. I have never once forgotten the advice from Dr. Matson which I have handwritten on a canvas right next to my front door, which says, "Remember -- happiness leads to success!"

I have channeled that advice more than ever before in my life during this last month or so, and I have thought of Dr. Matson's words often. That includes his words about happiness becoming so important to you that you will stop at nothing to achieve it, and his words about not following the money in order to be happy because that's the inverse of how it works, and his words about twenty-somethings "drifting" after graduation and before marriage thus allowing themselves time to explore and find themselves, and his words about how those who do not progress and evolve will eventually get left behind. When I was a nineteen-year-old sophomore sitting in the front row of his class, I thought I understood what he was talking about pretty well. But now that I have actually lived through some of what he warned me was coming, I understand even better.

Throughout all of this (what has felt like a crazy mess to me but what is probably not that big of a deal actually) I have had tremendous support from so many of the people around me. I find myself feeling so grateful for those who love me enough to calm me down when I need it. One such source of inspiration which I was a bit shocked to hear such wisdom from, was my father.

He told me during one of his little pep talks that all of these experiences are nothing more than stepping stones, and that I should treat them as such. My father, having the way with words that he does, painted a picture in my mind of life as a pond with a series of stones protruding above the water as I use them to cross it. He told me, "Some stepping stones you step on for a long time, and they're more spaced out than the others. And others, they're closer together and you step on a whole bunch of them for a short period of time. You just gotta figure out the difference."

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So I learned that the job I had in college was a big stepping stone that I stayed on for three years, isolated away from the others which were soon to come. The job at the law firm was a stepping stone I stayed on for three months. And the others, well, those were stones I was only meant to step on to help me get closer to where I'm going... Wherever that may be. Maybe I'll stay on them a long time, or just a little bit. But I won't know until I get there.

When I look at it in this light, it really makes much more sense, in the grand scheme of things. It fits in nicely to the idea that everything happens for a reason, and that you can't connect the dots looking forward, as Steve Jobs once said. You can only connect them looking back. Everything in the universe works together to culminate in the bettering of yourself, if you can just be open to it as it happens.

So, I think it's important to focus on what I can take away from these experiences. I've learned many things which I now know I do not like about a job. And it's not like I got fired from a single one of them. I just felt obligated to leave what I knew in my heart was not right for me. And in doing that, I have only managed to get closer to discovering exactly what is right for me. At the end of the day, I've got to believe that's more than enough to get me wherever it is I am meant to go.

I Got Accepted by the Peace Corps and I Changed My Mind

Wow, much has happened since my last blog entry. After the beginning of May, finals week came and passed, I graduated, I returned to France, and when I came back to America, I got right to work at my new big girl job. So sorry for the long absence! I am back behind my keyboard today, though, and that is what is important. This blog may not be a long one, but it's something I want to write in order to feel better after it's out of my head and off of my chest. So, without further ado, let's get to it.

A good place to start is with all that hullabaloo I mentioned taking place in the month of May and during the first part of June. If I ever thought my life was busy during college, I had no idea what was waiting for me in the first few weeks following college. Not that I should complain too much, since it was an entirely voluntary and independently organized trip that I'd planned for myself, anyway. But that didn't mean it wasn't hectic flying halfway around the world a few days after graduating.

The point is, so much happened in my life during the period of time from the beginning of May to the beginning of June, and I was actually growing quite a bit during that month, even though the thought actually just fully occurred to me now.

At the beginning of May, with graduation on the 14th, I had no jobs lined up post-college. Not one. And not for lack of trying, mind you. I had applied to numerous positions, and scoured the internet for what I thought would be a good start to "the rest of my life," but I'd done a lot of it in vain. I was making broad strokes and casting a wide net, all of those picturesque metaphors which ultimately meant I was applying to anything I thought I was qualified for and wouldn't hate doing -- the two bare minimum requirements for many people during a job search when you need to pay the bills, unfortunately. So, I decided I was going to go something I'd been thinking about for a while -- I was going to apply for the Peace Corps.

What an excellent opportunity! It would teach me so much, my French would expand, I would go days without internet, I'd touch the lives of many, it'd look great on my resume when I came back to the States...There were so many reasons to try. I just had to give it a shot. Do my best -- that's what my mom always told me. So I applied. I got references to vouch for me and I answered their questions and I pressed submit, crossed my fingers, and hoped for the best. I submitted my application sometime in late April, and shortly thereafter, I received the most exciting email I think I've ever received, saying I was chosen for an interview via Skype and I needed to choose a time frame to complete it. Holy crap.

I chose a date -- May 11, because I already had another interview scheduled for that day, an in-person one for a job at a law office in Wichita. I figured if I did them both on the same day, that as nerve-wracking as it'd be, I'd only have to dress nicely once and I could take off only one day of work to accomplish it. After choosing a date, I began the long wait for the day to arrive.

When the day came, I was in an excellent mood and I really felt like I could take on the world. I had just finished my last day of college the day before, I would be graduating in three more days, and three days following that, I was going to be hopping on a plane and returning to the country I love. I was beyond ecstatic -- my skin was practically buzzing with a mixture of excitement and exhaustion that whole week.

I went to my in-person interview in the morning, and I walked out of there feeling alright about it, like I probably got the job, but I wasn't really sure. (Oh, I should also mention at this point that I did have one other job in my back pocket if I wanted it -- although it would pay me exactly half of what this law office job would.) So I knew I had a few options open to me at this point, three days before graduation.

But after I finished my hour-long Skype interview later that day, I knew I'd nailed it. I knew I had this one in the bag, I just felt it. I had gone to Subway to grab some lunch, gone home and eaten it, put sticky notes outside all my doors saying to please be quiet and not knock for the next hour, fixed my hair, and sat down in front of my webcam. Let's do this.

The guy who interviewed me was beyond nice, and he was a returning Senegal volunteer as well. He was calling from DC at the Peace Corps Headquarters and he was stationed in a small cubicle with a Peace Corps backdrop behind him. As I spoke my answers slowly to him, he typed on his computer to take notes. I felt I was well-prepared for whatever they asked me, because I had read through not only all of the information the Peace Corps had sent me, but I'd Google researched a lot of things, too. There was not a question he asked me that I didn't have a good answer for. I was acing this interview, and I knew it. After an hour of Q&A and luckily no unanticipated technical difficulties, it was over. I informed him I'd be out of the country for a couple weeks soon and that if he wished to contact me, the best way to do so would be by email. I thanked him once again and that was that. I'd done the best I could, and now I would wait.

But between May 11 and July 5, a lot of stuff happened.

For instance, on May 13, the day before graduation, I was offered -- and I accepted -- the position at the law office. Therefore, I respectfully declined the position at the other job that would pay me half. Then I got on a plane and traveled 34 hours to the other side of the world. Then I spent two of the best weeks of my life in France and sobbed when I had to leave. Then I came home and had to move all of my belongings the next day. Then I had to find an apartment to move into one month later. Then I had to find new belongings to furnish this apartment with. Then I started my new job and had to go to work and focus on nothing else for eight hours per day. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera... And if you don't think all of these things happening within the first month after graduating from college were enough to make my heart, mind, body, and soul stretch and grow and change and morph into newer, better, stronger versions of themselves... Then you have clearly never experienced something quite like my ungraceful stumble toward responsibility.

So. This was adulthood. I was beginning to settle in nicely to the idea, although the idea of "settling" into anything somewhat gives me hives (but that's another blog entirely). I had begun thinking of the future a bit, and what I wanted to do with myself in the time that would soon follow the present moment. I didn't feel like I had a much clearer idea of what I wanted that moment to look like, than when I had still been a student a month and a half ago. Walking across that stage hadn't suddenly imparted as much wisdom into me as I had hoped it would.

I had a few ideas though, of where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. Nothing too concrete, because as I said earlier, settling scares the living daylights out of me, and I don't want to get ahead of myself here. At the time, I had considered applying for the TAPIF to teach English in France for seven months. That seems like an absolute no-brainer to me. I also seriously contemplated applying with INTERPOL and working in their Headquarters in Lyon. Again, a serious no-brainer for the International Business graduate and Francophile. And everyday, I still very much feel compelled to get on a plane to Boston and never come back. All of these right brain ideas were out there swirling around in my head, and yet, in reality, my left brain knew I had to keep my butt right here in Wichita and earn a living first, if I ever wanted to have a chance to make any of those dreams a reality. Meanwhile, I was still waiting to hear back from the Peace Corps, which still had until September 1st (Hogwarts Express day) to tell me a definitive answer about my fate.

And then the day came. And past. And I had no idea because the email went into my stupid junk folder.

Last Tuesday, on the day after the Fourth of July, I was lying in my bed right before I fell asleep around ten o'clock, and for whatever reason, the mood struck me that I should check my junk folder. Don't ask me why. I opened it and I was thumbing through it, when I saw the name of my interviewer towards the top. He had sent me an email that very day! My heart started racing. I mentally prepared myself. And I opened it.

But it didn't make any sense. He was talking about traveling and how he wondered if  I was still abroad, and he said he was prepared to extend my response time if necessary. What? I was confused. So I went back to my junk folder and that's when it all made sense. He had sent me an official invitation to Senegal one week earlier. And the rule with the Peace Corps, as he had told me in my interview, was that I had three days to respond. Crap. Crap. Crap!!!

I reread his second email. Now it made sense. But I had to respond to him ASAP because I didn't want to keep him waiting. In order to respond, I first had to figure out what I was going to say, and then how I was going to say it. I pressed reply, and I took my time.






The truth is, I already knew long before this moment that I wasn't going to go to Senegal. If I'm really being honest with myself, I knew my heart had fallen out of love with the idea while I was in France. I can't really explain why, much beyond the fact that I simply remembered exactly how much I loved France while I was there. I think, looking back, I may have just wanted to go. Anywhere. I've always felt compelled to go elsewhere and help people. In fact, those were my two main motivations and objectives in my job search to begin with. If I can speak French while doing these two things that my heart so wants to do, then I will enjoy the journey all that much more.

So, I can see why joining the Peace Corps and helping female entrepreneurs in Senegal was so appealing to me. On paper, it makes perfect sense. But when real life happens between the moment when my interest is piqued and when the plane leaves the tarmac, there is more than enough room for a change of heart to occur. Especially when you've got such a fickle heart as mine, which so easily falls in and out of love.

In my response, I told my interviewer that I simply did not feel like this was the right thing for me to do anymore. I explained how things had changed since May, and I told him I felt that it would be extremely unfair to myself, the Peace Corps, and the people of Senegal whose lives I would touch, if I followed through with a twenty-seven month commitment to a cause which I now only felt lukewarm about at best. I would not have been able to sleep at night knowing there might well have been other volunteer candidates whose hearts would've been much more invested in their work than mine.

I'm not gonna lie, it was heartbreaking to write that response. I laid in my bed, in the dark, and typed it out on my phone, and cried because I felt bad. But then I took a deep breath and I pressed send. I just couldn't imagine myself getting on a plane out of Wichita to Senegal this February. Two months ago, that seemed like the right thing to do. I had fewer people and less meaningful things to leave behind. But we don't get to control the path life jerks us down sometimes, and in moments like these, I think it's nice to believe we do have somewhat of a choice. Sure, I didn't choose my heart remembering all of the things it treasures about France when I went back. To be honest, I didn't really plan a lot of things that happened during that trip, but I'm glad they did. I didn't plan to have so few career aspects after graduation either, but here I am, still in Wichita, and at least I'm well-paid. So feeling like I got to decide of my own free will that I would not be going to Senegal alone for more than two years -- while that seemed perfect for the headstrong, independent, strong-willed Alyssa two months ago -- really mattered to me now, and moreover, choosing not to go just felt right.

Every decision we make has its reasons, and a lot of the time, we have very personal justifications for our actions. Nobody owes an explanation to anyone else in this world, but I do think it is very important that we can at least look in the mirror and honestly answer to the one person who matters most in our lives: ourselves. If I had accepted the Peace Corps invitation, I'd be headed for great things. But I'd feel like I made the wrong choice. And that matters much more, because it's not something I'm willing to live with.

Sweating the Small Stuff: The Political Correctness of Personal Opinion

I used to be a pretty negative and hateful person. I know it's hard to believe, but it's true.

Just a few years ago, at the beginning of college, I used to allow myself to get so upset and angry about things because I took everything personally. Any time I ran across something or someone in my life with which I disagreed, or which I thought rubbed me the wrong way, I chose to let it bother me -- deeply so -- to the point that I was just always perpetually pissed off about something. And let me tell you, it was exhausting.

Then, sometime around the end of my sophomore year, and at a point in my life which has since proven itself to be pretty pivotal for a few reasons, I read a book by Richard Carlson called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff (and it's All Small Stuff). It changed my life.

I learned that things are not meant to be taken so personally. I learned that I was actually the one choosing to get offended by views I did not agree with. I realized that the whole world did not, in fact, revolve around me, and what I thought was the one correct way to do things. I came to understand that life is entirely what you make it -- and that if you choose to make it an "emergency," as he called it, then that's exactly what it's going to be. Basically, I grew up a lot. And my life has been infinitely better, happier, calmer, and overall more enjoyable for me and those who are in it, ever since.

But what does that have to do with anything?

Well honestly, it has a lot to do with everything. You see, that moment in my life has helped change my perspective on a lot of things. Don't get me wrong; I still screw up on occasion and I am still very much learning as I go along. But I can clearly see progress from where I am now, compared to where I was then. If I had to choose one aspect of my life which has benefited the most from changes like these, it has got to be the way in which I react to things now.



Billions of people all over social media get offended nearly on a minute-by-minute basis nowadays. They watch something or read something, and their reactionary fingers are quick to the keyboard in anger. Have I done this myself on several occasions? You betcha. Did it make me feel better in the moment? Oh yeah. But was it good for my happiness and well-being in the long run? Did it help me in any way, with learning to let things go? Not at all.

Now, until recently in my life, I would have been the first person out of everyone I know to unyieldingly support the idea of political correctness. And why not? I value mutual respect in the political sphere, as well as between two human beings in their everyday interactions. To me, for most of my adult life, political correctness has always meant treating other people the way you would like to be treated. It has meant respecting one another's differing opinions and working together to not offend one another with things like slurs and bigoted comments. Being politically correct, for me, has long been something I value. Until recently.

Perhaps this is a part of my impending adulthood and the realization that it's not the bed of daisies some of us have always imagined it to be. But recently, I have reached the conclusion, that perhaps being politically correct all the time is not appropriate, after all. That is, I have arrived at the belief that there is a time and a place to be politically correct -- and that is about 98% of the time in 98% of the places -- but there is also, absolutely, without a doubt, and rightfully so, a time and a place to simply put your middle finger in the air and politely offer two words to those who may take issue with it. And that time and place is when it comes to your own damn personal opinion.

In my life experience, I find that we humans seem to get awfully caught up in not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings. In fact, I have noticed myself tiptoeing around others before, in order to not offend them because I know their opinion is different than mine. And I have got to say: I've had quite enough of that in my lifetime, and I'm only twenty-two years old.



Put briefly, I'll explain: I have an opinion, and I have a right to have it. My opinion can be a lot of things. In fact, it can be any single thing in the world that I choose for it to be. And there's not a damn thing that says you have to like it. You don't have to agree with it. In fact, you can blatantly and grossly disagree with the very fundamentals of it. And vice versa. I can think your opinion is the most nonsensical, absurd, and downright stupid thing I've ever heard. But I don't have to agree with it, in order to understand that you have the same right as I do, to have it.

Furthermore, I can wholeheartedly disagree with you on something, and still choose not to react to it as if I have been personally offended by your differing opinion. This is a pretty heavy intellectual concept that I think many people fail to utilize in their everyday lives.

You see, before I read that self-help book a few years ago, I saw everyone who had a different opinion than me as a threat to my own stubborn belief system. I viewed every discussion on abortion, same-sex marriage, and gun control as a showdown of epic proportions, where I had to fight to the death (that is, until I was emotionally drained and physically exhausted) until I could persuade the other person that my opinion was correct and that they had so personally offended me before. I simply could not let it go when someone did not see every little thing in exactly the same light as I did.

Thinking and behaving this way cost me a lot. It cost me my happiness and peace of mind, it cost me sleep on some occasions, and it even cost me some relationships. It robbed me of the truly zen outlook on life which comes with knowing that not everything is intended to personally offend you or piss you off -- in fact, most things people do are done from their own self-serving intentions, without you in mind at all.

Once I  realized and better understood that, I really did stop sweating the small stuff. I was able to comprehend that being politically correct is called for -- most of the time -- in a public setting, on touchy subjects, when talking to a large group of diverse people. But when it comes to my own personal opinion, and my own set of beliefs which govern my personal life, I can say and do whatever I want. And nobody else has to like it.

Everyone has an opinion. Chances are, out of some 7 billion people on the planet, you're not going to be able to find someone who agrees with you on everything. The more quickly you learn to accept that we all think and feel differently, and that there's nothing wrong with that, the more quickly you will realize that it's your choice to be offended by someone else. And in the grand scheme of your life, someone else's opinion really is the small stuff. And if you want to enjoy the kind of inner peace that everyone deserves, then you really shouldn't sweat it.

Letting things go is just so much easier than carrying around resentment and anger in your heart over the course of your life. So the next time someone says or does something that offends you, ask yourself if it is worth taking personally. Is it something truly offensive and politically incorrect, like Donald Trump hailing Hitler or yelling racial slurs? Or is this person simply exercising their right to have an opinion different than yours, the very same right you reserve for yourself?

We Are Only in Our Twenties

I went out one night recently with an acquaintance who I had not seen in a while. With graduation quickly approaching for myself and many of my friends, it is fair to say things are overall pretty hectic in all of our lives at the moment. Naturally, many of our conversations are focused around our lives as young adults as they are preparing to begin (as if our lives did not already begin over twenty years ago). All of these future-focused conversations have really got me doing some introspective thinking as of late.

Now, this acquaintance and I, we do not always see eye-to-eye. A lot of the time, we do. But one major difference between us that I have noticed increasingly as graduation has approached, is our outlook on life moving forward. Of course, there's nothing wrong with either of the two ways we envision our lives to be from this point on, but I just can't help but be fascinated by the very fact that such a difference exists. Like many other things, I suspect this is the result of our culture and the messages we have constantly heard for our entire lives. I'll explain.

While I was chatting with this acquaintance, we got around to such topics of apartment shopping, career paths, and starting families. She was worried sick about her future. She has a pretty good internship now, and she was worried about whether it was going to lead to a permanent full-time position, post-graduation. She has to find a new place to live, and she is hoping to move in with her current boyfriend, in hopes that this situation *obviously* leads to marriage, children, and a quiet, safe life in the Kansas countryside.

Like I said before, there is certainly nothing wrong with this path, if that is the way your life goes. In fact, I know someone else who has already graduated, started her career, gotten married, and settled down in the Kansas countryside. Happily ever after.

But to me, in my own honest opinion, that seems downright crazy. Why? We are in our early twenties, not our late thirties, and we have so much life left to live to figure everything out. There's no rush to know all the answers and settle ourselves down forever.

Back to my acquaintance. When she asked me what plans I have for after May 14th when we become full-time adults, I simply shrugged and told her, "I dunno." Her eyes widened and she almost spat out her drink. "What do you mean, you don't know?" Well, I don't know. I can't tell the future, and I have learned to accept this fact because there's no way worrying will ever make me a psychic, and even if it could, there's no way seeing the future can actually help a person change it, anyway.

(Side note: I'd like to really emphasize just how foolish it is to be so shocked when someone says they don't know what the future holds. Because even though this acquaintance of mine has an internship, a relationship, and soon maybe even an apartment, she still knows just as little about the weather tomorrow as I do. She's just fooled herself into a false sense of security thinking she *knows* the future thanks to a few material things which give her a semblance of safety.)

My acquaintance was shocked by my seemingly blasé reaction to her surprise. But I'm used to this by now. Because, as I mentioned earlier, this is a concept which our culture has manufactured and spoon-fed to us from the beginning of time. It freaks us out when we don't have a clear idea of what the future looks like. And understandably so, especially for Millennials, who are used to having the world at our fingertips and thus being able to find an answer for just about anything in a few seconds' time, provided that the Wi-Fi connection is strong enough. But we can't Google what our futures hold.

No, there's a necessity for patience and flexibility that one must have about seeing where their life will take them. It's extremely uncomfortable for someone my age (myself included) to sit tight and wait and see how things go. We are ill at ease with the idea of being comfortable in the uncomfortable unknown that must accompany change if it is to be accepted, because we are so used to knowing everything right now.

Add to this the fact that we, as young people, have been enculturated to believe we need to have all the answers the very moment we enter the "real world," (nevermind the fact that we have no experience to actually draw from in this mythical world). We are told we need to land an internship, graduate, get a good foothold on a longterm career right out of the gates, find someone to love, get married, and settle down to raise a few kids in order to start the cycle over again.

And that's fine. We can do that, if we choose. But do we have to be in such a damned big hurry to do it all right this instant? Are we not allowed every single second in our lives to get to know ourselves and grow and learn more about the world around us, before we are pressured into quickly making so many decisions which will affect us in the longterm? I think we are.

I've only really been taking care of myself on my own as a semi-adult for about four years now. I'm in no hurry to grow up and try to take care of others, too. I really don't feel the pressure to start my career right now. I want to have some fun first. I don't know what I'll be doing after graduation. I don't have it all figured out right now. And that's okay. I can't tell the future, and that's the point. It's not supposed to be determined yet. It is open-ended and left up to me to decide. I want to take for granted that privilege and all the choices I am able to make as a result of it. I can't afford to waste any freedom on worrying about the fear and anticipation that the world has tried to instill in me.

My generation is the one who birthed the phrase "YOLO," and perhaps that's because, as a whole, we are so used to instant gratification that we don't have much of a longterm orientation. Living only once is often accredited for young people doing a number of stupid things, in the name of maybe being dead tomorrow (although statistically unlikely). While it is true that I will live only once, that doesn't mean I have any inclination of how long my life will be. Maybe I will die tomorrow. Or maybe I'll die at the ripe old age of 78. I'm not worried about it. Either way, I have plenty of time to figure stuff out before I rush into any decisions about marriage, career, apartments, or even getting a house plant. After all, I'm only in my twenties.

What Are You Going To Do After Graduation?

This is the question I have been asked countless times over the course of the last year of my life, but particularly this semester, and particularly more frequently as the days have passed.

It's April now. I graduate next month. And I have no plans as of yet for the future. It's a daunting fact and a realization that carries power with it to haunt me for days. I don't have a job lined up -- least of the beginning of a career and I don't have the first idea where I am going to live. It's terrifying.

And yet, I have remained pretty calm throughout all of it. At the beginning of this year, my goal was to find a job by second semester. At the beginning of second semester, my goal was to find a job by spring break. After spring break, my goal was simply to find a job. And it hasn't been for lack of trying. But I just don't seem to be having any luck.

I've applied lots of places. Locally, and in Boston. All last week and the week before, I have sat in class, multi-tasking as I attempt to feign interest in whatever the teacher has been talking about, while simultaneously sifting through internship opportunities and online application portals. I have revised my cover letter so many times, I think I could recite the introduction paragraph by heart. I have pleaded in desperation to companies to please hire me, veiled thinly with phrases like "I await your response" and "let me know if you have any questions". And all to no avail.

I just spent some time surfing through Boston's Housing Wanted link on Craigslist where I ultimately posted an ad asking for a room to stay in during the summer, even though I have no job lined up and no money for a down payment. What can it hurt?

I so don't have my shit together. I don't have a place to live -- here or there -- and I don't know where I'm going to work after May 14th. Sure, I've booked myself a roundtrip ticket to France for a two-week post-graduation vacation in the country I love, but upon my return, I will be landing not only in Wichita, but in reality. A reality which is likely to see me unemployed and homeless.

Over the last several months, my friends have been discussing apartments in Wichita and things like rent and roommates. They've started new jobs at big companies and things are looking great for them and their continued lives in the Midwest metropolis which is Wichita. But not for me. I want something more.

Of course I do. I always do. And isn't that exactly what always gets me in trouble? I demand euphoria, excitement, drama, perfection. I need things to be big and bold and absolutely not boring. I have to go and do things on my own and far away from everyone else. I can never simply be satisfied to stay where I am, and live my life among those who seemingly do not long for faraway places in the same way I do. No, I have to make things difficult on myself.

I know that, but I also know that making things difficult is just another way of saying that I am making things worthwhile. All the struggles and moments of sheer fear when I have no earthly idea of what is coming next, that's going to be the stuff that makes it meaningful later on, right? Right?

Nobody has the answer for me. Least of all, myself. Nobody has any idea what is going to happen to Alyssa in the future, or even right now, for that matter. And that thought alone is enough to make me want to enroll in more classes until I die.

After graduation -- out there, in the real world -- that is the place where scary things happen. The unknown lurks around every corner and there are bills to be paid and responsibilities to be had. It's the total opposite of the warm security blanket of college education which has coddled me for the past eight semesters. It's a harsh wake-up call from an angry mother with a shrill voice the morning after a night out with friends, as she rips the covers off of your face and turns your hungover, disoriented world upside down. It's sudden, it's scary, and it's very, very real.

And yet, I find it most comforting to recognize the fact that there are others who are in the very same boat as me. Even though I haven't had enough time to catch my breath in two weeks, even though I have an exam tomorrow which I should be studying for now, and even though I won't see the end of my to-do list until a few days before graduation finally arrives... I think it is somehow calming to accept the fact that I am not in this alone.

Sure, I may be freaking out about my future. But everyone does, at some point. And yeah, hindsight is always 20/20. But foresight? You're going into that blind. There's no way to tell the future. There's no way to know if the next best decision of your life lies just around the corner. There's no way to know. Until you get there. You just have to go.

You just have to have faith in yourself and your life and know that whatever happens, will do so for a reason and it will all inevitably lead you down the right path at the right time and you will arrive exactly where you are meant to be, to stumble upon the opportunities which are meant for you. And that's horrifying. But what other choice do you really have?

So no, I don't know what I'm going to do after graduation. I don't know where I'm going to live, either. Maybe Wichita. Maybe Boston. Maybe France. Maybe somewhere else entirely. I may work two jobs earning minimum wage as a barista and a waitress, putting in 50 hours a week. I may land my dream job tomorrow when one of the internships in Boston finally replies. I just don't know.

I haven't the foggiest. Because, for the first time in my life, the protective, familiar structure of academia has not dictated what I am supposed to do or where I am supposed to go. I am free to choose what I want to do, where I want to go, and who I want to be. I am vulnerable and, finally, I get to make all my own decisions. That's terrifying, and I haven't really figured it all out yet. And that's okay. I'm twenty-two and new at this. I don't have to have everything figured out. Thanks for asking.

Your Happiness Will Become So Important To You

When did I become so preoccupied with caring about what others think of me? At what moment in time did that become so important to me? Sometime in college, surely.

I remember sitting in Dr. Matson's class the spring semester of freshman year, frantically scribbling notes in my textbook with every word of wisdom that traveled from his mouth to my ears. I remember many things from that class and that man, but in this moment I remember a specific sentence he uttered, which I suspect will only grow in value to me as time goes on. He was talking about happiness in our careers, and he said, "Happiness leads to success, not the other way around. A lot of people think it is success that leads to happiness, but it's not. And if you want any shot at real happiness in your life, you'll realize that pretty fast." The part I remember so clearly is what came next. "Your own personal happiness will become so important to you, that you will do whatever is necessary to attain it." He said we would cut ties with people, quit bad jobs, and even move elsewhere eventually, if our happiness dictated it was necessary.

At the time, I was newly nineteen years old and it is honestly amazing to me how little I had experienced in my life up to that point. That was only three years ago, but my god, it feels like so much of my own naiveté has worn off since that time. Now, a few months away from graduation and having to enter the Big Girl Job Market with nothing more than hard work and good luck between now and then, I understand what he was talking about. Freshman year, I felt no pressure whatsoever to pick a career which would be personally fulfilling, financially secure, and also provide a good deal of upward mobility, all at once. Those thoughts weren't even blips on my radar. My, how life changes... and fast.

I think about the wonderfully wise words of Dr. Matson quite often, especially during any rough patch I have gone through during my college experience. And as many college students could attest to, sometimes rough patches seem to happen a little more frequently than not. My close friends like to tease me when I quote Dr. Matson, and they say I have a crush on him. But I really just can't help but internalize messages like these. He has really played an important role in my education - both academically and otherwise.

While on the subject of happiness in career, the conversation veered off a bit into the territory of personal happiness, and especially in interpersonal relationships. (This was a sociology class, after all.) What I appreciate most about this quote of his, is that like most of his advice, it applies not only to career, but to the rest of life as well.

Recently (within the last week), I have noticed myself feeling so aware of other people. At first, I thought to myself, "huh, that's weird," and went on about my life. But the more I noticed it, the more uncomfortable it made me. I have never been one to care much about the opinions of others before. What changed? Now, this didn't settle well with me. So naturally, I had to dig a little deeper within myself to investigate.

What do I mean, I cared more about what others thought? What I mean is, over the course of the last few years, I think I have unwittingly become hypersensitive to how others perceive me. Perhaps it has been a combination of so-called friends telling me I am "too much" for them (yes, seriously) and also learning so much about the roles which are socially acceptable for women to play in society. (Being a Gender Studies student means it's only a matter of time before you start to analyze everything you do and what your motivation is for doing it.) I dunno. Some combination of these events led to my sudden hyper-conscientiousness about all my words and actions.

It really culminated this week, when I realized I was acting differently around a new dynamic of friends in a social setting I'd never been in before - and one I'll never be in again. I didn't realize how aware I was of how I was acting until after it was over, when I was alone in my own quiet time at the end of the day, and I felt that familiar proverbial exhale as I was finally able to fully embrace my solitude.

I was sitting on my bed by myself tonight, literally laughing out loud at the comedy documentary I was watching on Netflix. I laughed as a totally involuntary bodily reaction to the hilarious media I had just absorbed. I realized a few seconds too late, that I had laughed quite loudly, and that it was past quiet hours in the dorms. "Oops," I thought. But then, something weird happened. Immediately after I caught myself acting in a way which was bound to get me in trouble, I also thought, "Wait a minute, that was kind of incredible. I was just being myself and laughing and not thinking about it at all." But this beautiful thought had only been floating above my head for a few moments before it was replaced by another: "That's kind of sad, that I just realized that. Why don't I just naturally act this way without thinking all the time?" And so on and so forth. Then I had a cup of tea and slowed my brain down long enough to form my bumbling thoughts into words on this screen.

If you were to ask many people who know me, they would probably tell you that I am very much myself most of the time and that I oftentimes lack a filter. This would lead you to believe that I have no problems whatsoever with being unapologetically myself, and that I do so quite freely. But you would be wrong.

I'm not sure that it was a single moment in time when my brain decided, "Okay, we're going to suddenly care much more about everything we do now," rather than a gradual escalation of social cues on which I learned to pick up. In fact, I think most of it started when I began to examine so many social interactions under the microscope of feminism. I used to just act in the way which was most natural and comfortable to me, and screw you if you didn't like it. Granted, I ran into my own fair share of confrontation that way as well, but I didn't really care. That was the whole point. And I'll tell you what, I was pretty happy in those days. Like, really "I know what I want to do with my life" happy.

Then I began thinking about how I was acting, rather than just simply acting. That was the problem. I started putting thought behind the things I was doing, calculating. "Okay, if this is how I am expected to act, then I will actually act in the total opposite way. I will defy the expectations placed on me by society, and I will create social change all while being a rebel. I'll win!" became a common thought process in my head. But goodness, if that isn't exhausting. It downright rips the fun out of life, because instead of living, you're thinking.

Earlier this week was the moment when I realized this sort of pattern occurring and I kind of just decided enough was enough. I was thinking about so many things before I did them. It was not natural to me, and it just didn't feel right. If I can't just be myself and act however I feel is best, then I'm spending time with the wrong people. I think the goal is to be able to have that moment - that proverbial exhale - in the presence of others. That moment I had where I let it all out in my quiet alone time - that is the exact kind of myself I would like to be, without thinking before acting. And screw you if you don't like it.




So I'm not really sure when it was exactly that I started caring so much about what others think of me. I don't remember the moment in time when I started thinking before acting. But starting right now, I'm taking it all back. I no longer have the energy to be anything but myself. If being myself means I adhere perfectly to the expectations placed on me, then so be it. That's all right. If it so happens that being myself means I break every single one of the rules that were intended for me, then so be that, too. I don't care. I figure I'll lose the wrong friends and make the right ones this way. People will either love me for it, or not. Either way, I know it'll all work itself out in the end, after the dust of all this growth and self-exploration has settled.

Because my own personal happiness has finally become so important to me that I will do whatever is necessary to attain it.

The Pleasure and Pain of Travel: Always Holding On, Always Letting Go

I know I am young - a few weeks shy of twenty-two - and I have not experienced nearly enough of the world. I've only ever been to three countries and I haven't even graduated college yet. But I still have my fair share of valuable experiences to offer me guidance and to help me continue to grow.

Something I have learned during my short time on this planet is that life is a balance of holding on and letting go. This lesson became especially close to my heart after I experienced a little bit of traveling and learned what the world looked like from the other side. Of course I had experienced the joy of cherishing a moment before, as well as the anguish of letting go. But it really wasn't until I took myself so far away from my comfort zone, acclimated myself and got comfortable, then had to leave again, that I had a deeper grasp on understanding how these feelings work - or how natural and common they actually are in so many parts of life.

Falling in love is so easy. I can fall in love with anything, really. People, places, food, television shows, boy bands, clothes, foreign languages... There is a doe-eyed, hopeless romantic hidden away deep inside of my heart, and she loves to love. Over time, as is the case with many people, the romantic inside of me has learned some tough lessons from her own experiences with pain. But despite being immersed in agony at times, she remains eager to explore the world and all it has to offer, greeting everyone and everything she encounters with an open mind, an open heart, and a ravenous curiosity.

A few years ago, I fell in love with traveling. I had no idea what I was in for, but I know now that when it comes to not being heartbroken, I never stood a chance. I went to France for a summer to study abroad as a sophomore in college, and my life - and my heart - was changed forever. I fell in love with the abstract idea of traveling itself, as well as the country of France, the culture, the architecture, the food, and most importantly, the people. I had no idea how difficult it would be to let all of these things go when I had to come back home.

Last year, I went to Boston for half a week by myself. Nearly everyone I talked to thought it was such a terrifying idea, a single woman flying across the country alone. But I had to go. I had to know what it was like in the city where I'd never been before, but that was calling me steadily towards it. I needed to experience it for myself. My heart needed to feel what it was like. Four days came and went, and before I knew it, I was on a plane heading out of Logan Airport, just like that. Once again, I felt that familiar twinge of sorrow as I watched the tops of tall Bostonian buildings fade from view as we rose higher into the clouds.

All of these experiences and memories - all of the things I think of fondly when they cross my mind - make me so happy because I hold onto them; I do not let them go. I keep these wonderful tidbits of my life safely tucked away in my heart, filed between other sweet memories like childhood birthday parties and perfect first kisses.

I remember how it felt when that plane landed in Paris at 9:30 in the morning local time after almost 24 hours of traveling. I remember the warmth I felt when I hugged my two adorable and ornery little host sisters for the first time. I remember the fun I had together with an American friend as we drank and flirted with French boys on a Saturday night.

I remember boarding my connecting flight in Atlanta and hearing Boston accents in the rows near me, as we prepared to head northeast. I remember slurping oysters and drinking beer in the oldest restaurant in America after a morning of solo kayaking on the Charles River. I remember the blisters on my feet after a long day wandering around the big city in a sundress and taking photos of skyscrapers.

I would never willingly let any of those memories go. I cherish them. They're beautiful pieces of my life and together they help add up to me, so I clutch them tightly, very near my heart. But I have learned, after some time, that there are things in all of this mess of life that I do have to learn to let go.

Each semester, there is inevitably a new crop of international students who arrive on campus and who create unforgettable ripple effects in my life, if only for a moment. Each semester, after finals are over and celebrations have begun, the time comes when I have to say farewell to a friend I've known for four months. After seeing this person on a daily basis for so long, I have to accept that we will only be communicating over Facebook for the foreseeable future. I have to hug them and tell them to have a safe flight and try not to be sad about someone else leaving. And each semester, it never gets any easier.

These feelings wash over me when my new friends leave for other continents, mainly because of the fun we've experienced and the relationships we've shared across international borders, language barriers, and cultures. But I think these moments remind me of something else, on a deeper level; something that shaped me during such a pivotal moment in my development as a traveler: the morning I had to leave my host family in France.

It was early enough that the sun hadn't yet risen, and in France during summer, it seems rare that the sun is ever down for long. This was such a gloomy morning in comparison to the sun I had known for four weeks. I put my last few belongings away and zipped up my suitcase, carried it down the stairs, and prepared to tell two precious pieces of my heart good-bye. I remember trying in vain not to cry, and hugging my host mother tightly like the American women we are. I remember a sleepy seven-year-old, in the backseat of the car as her family prepared to leave for vacation, wagging her finger at me and very seriously telling me to "continue à apprendre le français" because my French sucked. I remember closing the door, and walking away toward the tram stop, rolling my suitcase behind me, and bawling like a baby.

I remember feeling as if some kind of monster had reached down through my throat and ripped my heart from my chest. My heart, which had just previously been smothered with love, compassion, curiosity, and wanderlust. My heart, which I thought I was keeping safely inside my rib cage, but which had somehow found its way out onto my sleeve. I had built such strong, beautiful, meaningful bonds with so many people in such a short amount of time, and now I was being forced to tell them all good-bye. It didn't seem fair. To subject a human being with such a vast emotional capacity as myself - who feels things before she thinks things - to such an emotional roller coaster ride, is simply cruel. Unless... These feelings exist for a reason, and they are there to teach me something about myself.

Historically, I've never been particularly good at letting go of things once I have become emotionally attached to them. And why would I be? I don't think it's something which is necessarily natural-feeling or innate to human beings. Moreover, it was certainly not something I was explicitly taught to do growing up in Western culture. So I knew how to hold on, how to fall in love with something or someone. But I had no idea how to get over it and let it go once this wonderful thing was gone. I didn't know how to handle the time after it was over, or what the grieving and recovery process should look like.

Boyfriends, sure. I'd loved them and lost them, and strangely enough, gone on to be better than fine without them. Best friends, yeah. I'd lost them too, and I knew I would be just as well without them. Family members and pets, I'd lost before, and I knew how to grieve then. But this was different. This was more than a person or an animal leaving me.

The notion of traveling as an abstract idea is fascinating to me, because it is so malleable and able to be customized to fit any individual's experience. No two people travel the same way, either literally through the rugged countryside or metaphorically throughout life. It is deeply personal and the traveler oftentimes learns more about themselves during their journey, than they originally set out to do. So how can something so beautiful that offers such wonderful experiences, also be the cause of such heartbreak and pain when it's over? Well, that's true with anything we love, isn't it?

Life is a balance of holding on and letting go, but you've got to not only know how to do both, but you've also got to learn when to do both. Perhaps most importantly, you've got to learn that both are equal and necessary counterparts to life and have faith in yourself that things will work out as they are meant to be. You've got to learn that letting go of the experiences and people you love is a part of life, and although it causes you pain, that is only because it first brought you so much pleasure.

The catch about being so alive and feeling so much pleasure, is that the parts of your brain and heart which feel that pleasure, can feel exactly that same amount of pain. All that your nerve receptors do is receive the message you send to them, and transmit it back with the same intensity, regardless of what the feeling is. And if so much love and euphoria can send your heart flying into the sky, that means that anything which hurts it can just as easily bring it crashing back down to the ground. It can be scary. The fact that something like intersecting lives and connecting souls around the world can affect you in such a way, and that it can influence and shape who you are as a person, means that we are vulnerable to being molded and changed at any time. But isn't that beautiful?

The first reaction to pain by many people, is to run from it. To ignore it and avoid it. To try to tough it out in hopes that it will go away. But that approach seldom works for the person experiencing it, and that's how problems go unresolved for quite some time. What if instead of running away from our pain, we ran towards it instead? What if we reach out and touch it, embrace it, hold it close and let it crack apart all the beautiful pieces of our heart and then use the fragmented voids to fill it up with a new kind of love? Get downright vulnerable with our pain. Let it wash over us and consume us, because if we do, it will heal us.

At first pain demands that we feel it - and we do. Then it sucks for a while. But eventually, if we run toward it rather than away from it, we will run so far into it that we meet ourselves. And when we come out from the other side of whatever this painful experience is, we will have changed. We will have been transformed into a different version of ourselves, and there will be no going back to the people we were before. Feeling so deeply can seem like a curse sometimes. But at other times, it provides you with a euphoria so much higher than everybody else. And that makes it all worth the pain.

I've grown so much and learned a lot about holding on and letting go during the last few years of my life. I have fallen in love with people and places and then a short time later, had to leave, every bit as in love as when I arrived. I've driven friends to the airport and hugged them good-bye, and told myself I'll see them again someday. My life has been touched by so many people, places, and experiences, and there's no doubt it is all the richer for it. But that's exactly why it's so hard to let go.

As a traveler, nobody prepared me for the moment when I'd have to say good-bye and return home. As a person, nobody prepared me for how to handle loving so many people in so many places at once. I don't have a solution as to how to let go, because I'm honestly just not very good at it yet. But I know life requires balance, so that must mean that I have to let go in the same capacity and intensity with which I try to hold on.

The people I love will still be there the next time plane tickets go on sale. The places I long to explore are not going anywhere, either. Maybe in the future, I can go visit my international classmates on their soil, rather than waiting for them to return to America. There are so many options for letting go.

Once your heart has made a connection to traveling, once you understand how liberating and beautiful it is, then you begin to understand why it's necessary to let go. By its very nature, traveling is a transient act. You move. You go. You leave. And while that certainly means something incredible is waiting to be seen ahead, it also means you're leaving something else behind. The beauty is found in the act of leaving, of letting go and letting be.

Travelers who master this art have simply opened their hearts so wide, that it has shattered time and again from the pain of leaving love behind. But they understand that anything which is beautiful is also oftentimes shrouded in pain. They open their hearts to feel all of the wonderful things about exploring new lands and new people. But in so doing, they make themselves vulnerable to feeling all the torture and anguish that comes with it, too. And in turn, that shapes and molds the person they are, just as any experience with love does. That's how we know we're alive. One of the most beautiful things about the human experience is that we can feel a full range of emotions from touching the lives of others, and having them touch ours; whether that happens when we are holding on, or when we have to let go.