If I Had Never Quit My First Job After College

If Present Me could visit Year Ago Me and recount to her all that has happened in the time since then, I think it would be just about enough to send Year Ago Me into a frenzied anxiety attack as she began her last semester of college and approached that daunting period of time known as After Graduation. Year Ago Me was lucky. She didn't know how good she had it, flying by the seat of her pants and figuring it out as she went along. And if Year Ago Me was lucky, then Ten Months Ago Me was whatever is more lucky than lucky. Because she snagged a Job After College just the very day before Graduation. So very typical of all versions of Me.

I was lucky that I got that first Job After College when I did, and I was even more lucky that the boss let me start three weeks later, allowing me two weeks in France as the congratulatory reward I decided I'd earned. Yes, I was lucky. But I wanted more. I had a Job After College, the very thing that had caused me anxiety for many days and nights leading up to the moment I walked across the stage in May. I was supposed to love it, to be grateful, to make money, and to be fulfilled. All the hard work of the previous four years and every single summer course and pre-session I took was supposed to be paying off now. This was the time I had always groaned about to myself as I did all the things I didn't want to do throughout college, every time I told myself, "Someday this will all pay off." This was Someday. But it sure didn't feel like all it was cracked up to be.

Never having been someone to ignore her feelings, not even for a minute, I knew that simply going through the motions with this Job After College just wasn't going to cut it for me. No, I needed something more. Sure, this Job After College was fine; it paid the bills and passed the time. But there are more meaningful things to life. There is fulfillment; there is passion; there is euphoria. And wherever those things were hiding, I didn't know. But I did know one thing at least: it sure wasn't here. So, I quit.

I've looked back at that moment of my life a lot since it happened, in hindsight, and I've gone through feeling many different ways about it. A lot of the time it was the emotion closest to regret as I could really ever describe. Not regret because I quit (I haven't regretted that for a second) but more like regret that what I was seeking when I left was nowhere near what I actually found. I had high hopes for myself, as I have since as long as I can remember. I wanted to move upward and onward, and that's where I envisioned my life and my career heading as I walked out the door on my last day of work. I had no idea just how difficult the next few months would prove to be. So it's only natural, I think, for me to think to myself when times have been tough, "Man, if only I had never quit my first job after college..."

Well, I've heard it from just about everyone close to me in some form or another, and when it started to seep into my own subconscious is the moment when I decided that enough was enough. I am resilient, I am adaptable, and if there is not another good thing to be said about myself, at least let it be said that I learn from my experiences. So, I decided (although not entirely intentionally, I'll admit) that I was done with the wallowing and self-pity. Yes, I lost a reliable income when I quit that job, but I think we are failing to focus on all that I gained.

Life is funny, and hindsight is, in fact, always 20/20. So it was not until just last night, one week before my twenty-third birthday, and eight whole months after I began that first Job After College, that the Nature of the Universe finally revealed itself to me and I was able to see the beauty and purpose in the path that my life has taken since the moment when I quit my first Job After College.

If I Had Never Quit My First Job After College

If I had never quit my first job after college in the beginning of last September, I never would have had my first real experience with presenting an intimidating boss with a letter of resignation.

If I had never quit my first job after college, I never would have met Kendel, or Kara or Joe or Kevin or Wade. I never would have experienced the pure displeasure which is direct selling, or any of the other explicitly pushy techniques I was told to study and master. I never would have learned to avoid the Electronics department of Walmart at certain times of the day on certain days of the week. I never would've had the luxury of starting work at 10:30 in the morning, and therefore had time to run three whole miles before a day spent standing on my feet, improving my stamina and endurance every time. I never would've gained the life experience of defending myself and my relationship against someone who did not have the same standards for himself or his relationship with his pregnant girlfriend at the time. I also never would've learned all that I did about DirecTV and AT&T and the business acquisition which happened between them both, nor any of the technical details I learned about television, Internet, and home phones.

If I had never quit my first job after college, I never would've gone to work for a travel agency and learned all that I did about the travel industry as a whole, which remains something very interesting to me. I never would've learned the main hub airports for Southwest, American, United, or Delta. I never would've helped so many people create memories in cities all over the country, and I never would've learned all that I did about transit visas and passports. I never would've met Genesis and eaten dinner with her in my home, spending hours catching up. I never would've met Daniel or Sophie or Robin, who reminds me so much of my mother. I never would've gained their friendship and heard the reverberation of my own soul in theirs. And I never would've experienced such a horrible boss as I did during my time there, or known what it felt like to cry in the bathroom at work. I never would have learned so much about the dirty secrets of one of Wichita's most prolific business families. I never would have momentarily forgotten my worth and accepted being paid minimum wage and belittled everyday. I never would have been so physically stressed out and tense because of a minimum wage job that I decided to take up YouTube Yoga every morning before going in to work. And because of that, I never would have made so much progress on my shoulder stand pose; ironically, my mind and body would not have improved as much as they did once I was pushed to finally mandate time for myself. And I never would've gained the strength and courage I did when I walked into his office for the final time to tell him I was done being mistreated, nor would I have felt the rush of true liberating relief that I did as I drove out of the parking lot for the last time.

If I had never quit my first job after college, I never would have needed to make more money and driven for Uber using Elle's car for three weeks. I never would've had so many great conversations with strangers in Wichita or told my story of working to buy a plane ticket to go visit my boyfriend for Christmas so many times. I never would have picked up so many passengers from all around the world, or felt the common thread of our collective humanity. I never would've experienced rolling around in Elle's vibrantly-decorated LGBT-mobile and felt how differently I was treated because of it, especially as it sat in the parking lot of my apartment the morning after Trump was elected.

If I had never quit my first job after college, I never would've driven downtown on that first Uber night, and seen my friend Kate's coffee bus parked at the Pop Up Park on a Friday night. I never would've stopped the car and gotten out to say hi, and I never would've told her that I was doing Uber because my crappy boss at my day job paid me minimum wage and I needed to take up a side hustle if I ever planned on boarding a plane to France in December. Kate never would've pointed to the food truck set up right next to hers and suggested I introduce myself to the owner because she was looking for someone to cashier part time and Kate thought we'd get along. I never would've walked right over to the window of that truck and asked for Lisa. I never would have met Lisa, or Eddi, or Kimber, Alex, or Christian. I never would've bonded with Lisa over our the dysfunction of our families, or thought of my own mother every time she said, "groovy". My path never would have gotten around to any of the other food truckers, either, and I never would've met Greg or Manu or Lauren or Jeff. I never would've gone to work for Jeff either, when he needed a shift covered last minute. I never would have forged those bonds with Wichita roots, or known regular faces at local places like CSB or Aero Plains. I never would've even known what Kimchi is, or cared about the presence of high fructose corn syrup in what I eat. I never would've carried that knowledge and awareness into an organic health foods store with me today. And I certainly never would've come to appreciate just how hard it is to work for tips, or how helpful a little lipstick and a nice smile can be for that. I never would have known the truly old-fashioned feeling that is stuffing a wad of cash into an envelope and mailing it home to your Momma at the end of the week, so she can maneuver it into your online bank account for you.

If I had never quit my first job after college, I never would have quit my second job, or my third. I never would have returned to the RSC after having finally walking away from Brad, to go plop down in Rich's office and chat openly with him about how much I appreciated him as a boss, and more importantly, as a friend, now that I did not have him anymore. I never would've known what it felt like to dislike one boss so much, in order to love and truly appreciate another even more. I never would have sat at a bar and drank beer with a former boss and discussed the legality of the actions of my current one. I never would have had such an experience.

If I had never quit my first job after college, I never in a million years would have been able to just drop everything and jet-set to Europe for nineteen days. I probably would not have been able to work my magic and charm any employer into justifying that absence, so I never would have arrived in Orly Airport in Paris, exhausted and smelly, with ripped jeans and unbrushed teeth, early in the morning in the middle of December. For that matter, I would still yet to have ever experienced the sheer luxury that is a bilingual British Airways international flight. I most likely never would have successfully pulled off going to France for Christmas with David, which means I would not as of yet had met his family; his parents, his sister, his brother-in-law, aunt, uncle, and cousins. I still would not know what la raclette is, and that would be a crying shame. I would not have the nineteen extra days of cultural immersion under my belt that I do, and however many countless vocabulary words I learned that trip would not yet be in my cerebral possession. I would not have spent a day in Paris at Christmas with Justine, laughing the whole time. I would not have really, truly, physically seen what my life might look like in France, if I actually got accepted into the TAPIF, and I would not have gone from about 80% sure to the full 100, that I absolutely wanted to live there someday very soon.

If I had never quit my first job after college, I would not know quite so well the misery that is even worse than the Minimum Wage Blues, but rather what followed: The Unemployment Blues. I would not have faced repeated employment rejection so many times from the very University I just contributed so much money to for more than four years. I would not have rallied my energy and persistence immediately after I received that rejection email while I was in France, my very own Happy Place. I would not have crashed down quite so hard to Rock Bottom and felt the ache in my bones as I collided simultaneously with the cold, hard earth and bitter reality. I would not have spent that time in Europe with very little spending money, and I would not have returned home flat broke. That would not have, in turn, inspired me to wipe my brow and work harder than ever to find something, anything, to pay the bills. I would never have spent a weeknight sitting crouched in front of this very computer, applying to job after job on site after site, as I polished off the last of David's disgusting Scotch in one night. I would never have marathoned more than 100 applications in one sitting as I did that evening. I never would have tasted such panicked desperation, and I never would have wanted it even more. I never would have jumped through so many hoops and gone to so many first-round interviews, only to not be invited back for the second-round afterward. I never would have been nearly as creative as I was with selling my resume to employers, skills which I no doubt retained from my second job after college. I never would've cried as much as I did and felt the true pang of sadness that was failure and rejection, or realized just how hard it really is to get back up that eighth time after you have fallen down seven.

http://www.rando-saleve.net/bricbrac2.html

If I had never quit my first job after college, I never would have accepted a position at a hoity-toity health foods store twenty-five minutes across Wichita from my apartment, with mere thirty minute lunch breaks, where my cell phone is considered the purest of contraband. I never would have accepted it as a viable option because I never would have admitted to myself that perhaps I did not have any other realistic options at this moment in time. I never would have considered that maybe living solely off of wages earned on the food truck in the coldest months of the year were not going to afford my rent for me next month. I never would have acted out of necessity, rather than my usual condition of privilege and pleasure. And I never would have come to realize that, along with making the highest hourly wage I've ever made in my life, I now actually enjoy my work and genuinely kind co-workers. But on the way to where I am now, I never would have had to ask so many of my family members if I could borrow money; and my relationships with my relatives would not have been so strained because of it, but they would not have grown and flourished as they have, either. If I had not taken this path in my life, I never would have been so truly humbled. I would not have appreciated my landlord's kindness and understanding quite so much. My heart would not have come to so warmly feel the true meaning of gratitude to all those who have helped me through my struggle in some way.

If I had never quit my first job after college, I would have remained complacent, resenting myself for settling for such a miserable feeling, until I eventually became numb. I would have significantly fewer friends and experiences, and I would have driven the same ten-minute drive to work every single day for the past eight months. I would have health insurance and a significant allowance of PTO by now, but my life never would have twisted and turned in this way. Neither my stubborn heart nor determined mind would not have been so violently pried open by change and forced to adapt in order for me to survive. I would have had only two W-2s to file last month and I am sure that the last three-quarters of a year would have gone a little more smoothly for me - financially, emotionally, and otherwise. I would have a much greater wealth of money, but I would be so much poorer in life experience, sorrow, and joy. I would not be better off, if I had never quit my first job after college.

If I had never quit my first job after college, I never would have learned so many things, many of which I can't remember now, and probably more still that I am not even consciously aware of yet. If I had never taken my foot off of that first stepping stone, I never would have arrived on the second, or third, or fourth, as far as that goes. I never would have honestly felt like I was pushing myself to really do more than what I knew I was settling for at the moment. And that would have eaten me up inside, because I would have known that I was not truly dreaming to my full potential. I was dumb, but I was brave. I was an idiot, but I was absolutely fearless about it. I made mistakes, but I owned them. And I know now, if I didn't before, that there really is no better way for me to learn. Life is about trial and error, and I am so proud of myself now, knowing that I was not afraid for a moment to try and fail, just to see what I could learn through the experience. I threw caution and safety to the wind, and I followed my heart. It was a long way down, but it didn't lead me astray. Every time we don't succeed, we learn one more way that does not achieve our goal. And we learn a whole heck of a lot about ourselves in the process.

If I had never quit my first job after college, I would have so many fewer bumps and bruises to my name, but I'd have a whole lot less character because of it, too; and not nearly as many stories.Every next level of your life demands a new version of yourself. Maybe I wasn't ready for whatever I went through on my path before I eventually got to it. But I had to go down the very path I did, in order to finally arrive. And from where I'm standing now, looking back at the many places I've been, I can see it all beginning to finally make sense. And it's happening just in time, too, as I turn my head to face the future and continue on down my path, lugging along all the lessons of the past with me as I go. I don't know what exactly it is that I may meet in the future, but just imagine how much more unprepared for it I would be, if I had never quit my first job after college.

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.

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.

The Battle Between My Brain & My Heart

Boys. I love them and I hate them. Not in a feminist ideology, equality-of-the-sexes way. In a "I've loved them and hated them since middle school for all the joy and pain they've brought me" way.

A handful of them have left marks on my life at different times, and undoubtedly, this has changed who I am as well as how I go about living my life afterward. I love it at the time; the excitement and the schoolgirl squeals and the butterflies in my tummy and all that jazz. But god, looking back at it, I can't help but roll my eyes and laugh. Why? Because I'm a cynic or a pessimist? No, I don't think so.

More likely it is because every time I have started with those squeals and that excitement, I have immediately imagined this perfect fantasy in my head, and once my heart is on-board with it, I am doomed. Doomed, because the actual relationship in reality has no chance of ever living up to the scenario in my head. So I laugh and roll my eyes afterward, because not a single one of those boys, just as young and inexperienced as me, had a prayer for giving me the perfection I didn't even realize I wanted.

One of the mind's favorite games to play is thinking without ever having the intention of acting. My brain loves to sit idly and fantasize about an imaginary future where everything is easy and things go perfectly according to plan. I like to dream up alternate universes where boys do exactly what I want them to do, and I have all the time and money in the world to make everything perfect. But I am a smart girl, and I know in reality, that's not how any of this works. Real life is not a Taylor Swift song. Time and money do not facilitate a perfect relationship. Manipulating others into doing what you want them to do, does not cultivate love and respect. It would be so easy if that's how things worked, but unfortunately it would not be even half as rewarding.

I have felt the highs and exciting squeals, and soon thereafter, the lows and the disappointed eye-rolls. I have played it cool and I have internally freaked out. I have played along in the game, just as I have been taught to do, and it worked out pretty well for me at first. But then my brain caught up to my heart and it metaphorically bitch-slapped it back into reality where it belongs. What am I thinking? What am I doing? This stuff is exhausting.

I am at odds with myself, and I have been for what often feels like forever; because my heart is busy painting big pictures and dancing around in the same euphoria it always demands, while my brain is scrambling to keep up as it files these grand ideals away neatly in their proper, alphabetized, places. I have always been a dreamer with a big imagination and enough ideas to never worry about coming back down to earth. That's why it has always been a less-than-graceful face-plant when I do come crashing down. I haven't ever really been bothered with the necessary planning that is required to build the steps on which I climb so high in the first place. But the existence of those steps is crucial for when the clouds of joy and excitement eventually fade away and I need something solid on which to support myself until my imagination can take off again.

I have always, for as long as I can remember, relished my individuality. I enjoyed alone time long before I ever enjoyed time spent with boys. My solitude means so much to me, that no obscene amount of money could ever compete. That's why I hate that I ever let a boy change that about me. There have been times in my life -- multiple in fact -- when I have felt myself lost, consumed almost entirely by someone else's being. Almost completely gone, I don't know if I would have been able to recognize who I am today in a mirror. It was a nightmare for someone like me, whose independent spirit demands to be recognized. I wondered how I ever allowed myself to get to that awful place. It is paramount that my individuality, my independence, remain untouched and intact, throughout every relationship with anyone that I ever have. I have known the feeling of losing myself in someone else before, and that is exactly why I now understand the importance of finding myself and never letting go again.

But it is so tough sometimes, when my dreamer's heart takes hold. It's like a kite caught by a strong northern wind, and all I can do is clutch helplessly onto the handle at the end of the string, holding on and being dragged along wherever it takes me until the wind dies down and all is calm again. My childlike heart does not care about the times it has been hurt before; it does not count the stitches in it or the scars it has collected over time. My heart has amnesia when it comes to the bruises and contusions it has suffered from all the times when I have lost myself in another. All it knows is, cute boy + possibility = grand illusions. My heart never paid attention to anything past this in math class.

My brain, on the other hand, gets it. My brain loves my independence more than almost everything else. Once the alcohol from the night before has worn off and the sunlight is streaming in through my window, my brain is awake and fully alert, demanding answers from my heart as if it is the main murder suspect sitting in an interrogation room. "What were you thinking? What were you doing? Didn't you learn anything from last time?" My brain is hesitant about making big commitments now, after what they have done to it in the past.  It understands that commitment to another person comes with the possibility of sacrificing a part of the whole person I already am. And my brain won't stand for such a betrayal of self anymore.

These two quarrel back and forth time and again, garnering experience and wisdom very slowly over time. My heart, throwing all caution to the wind and ordering just one more drink at the end of the night; and my brain chasing my heart frantically around, wagging its finger in its face like a disapproving mother. When will I learn?

I guess I will learn when I am ready to sacrifice a piece of my individuality for a piece of someone else, again. Out of unsolicited desire, rather than implied necessity. It will probably happen when the idea of taming my wild heart is no longer an option at all. Likely when someone else comes along and scoffs at the idea with the same disdain as I do. Someone who is appalled at the mere notion of me ever reigning my heartfelt ideals into the boxed-in framework of logic. I will finally know better when my brain draws a blank because my heart has already found the answers it seeks reflected in that of another.

But who knows when that day will be? Who knows what I will have to go through and experience in order to prepare myself for that opportunity? I sure as hell don't. So until that day arrives and hits me in the face like a ton of bricks, I guess I can just keep on dreamin', doing all the things that make me wonderfully myself. I can keep wearing my heart on my sleeve and gaining glorious experiences and having my hopes shattered time and again. Because really, it all adds up to the net sum of myself in the end, anyway. And none of it is so bad that it cannot eventually be overcome. I've got twenty-one-and-a-half years of empirical proof of that.

I'm not ready just yet to give up any part of myself or my freedom just because I like someone else. Yeah, I may like them, but I love myself more. This is something I have learned through experience over the years. And the way I see it, if someone is stupid enough to ask me to like them more than I like myself, well... they're just not a good fit for me. The day my brain draws a blank and doesn't know what to tell my heart to do, will be the day when someone comes along and tells me, "Don't you dare change any part of who you are for me. I love you for you, not for being a reflection of me." My brain will be perplexed by such an idea, and it won't have a file to reference. But my heart will finally understand.