On graduation, or...

...Why I don't have successful chit-chat

As most readers of this blog already know (I salute you, loyal readers!) I recently graduated from the University of South Carolina.

Some have begun to ask me, "What's it like?" or "How do you feel?"

I usually answer: "Weird," "Interesting," "Scary" or "I don't know" - then sort-of stare at the person as I ponder my future and they generally get creeped out.

While all those answers are basically true (the last being the closest) I think the picture has started to become clearer.

What's it like to graduate?

It's confusing. It's lonely. It's disorienting. In it's infinite freedom it feels shockingly constricting. With the options full and vast, the lack of small choices and a set purpose is like the floor dropping out from underneath you and the walls moving away yet you cannot move. You don't fall when the floor moves away, you're merely suspended there, with guilt and fear that maybe you should fall, or that you can at any moment.

I think when I came to college there was some unconscious feeling that I would begin to be defined by my time there and that, at the End, that far away thing, there would be something tangible. Not a degree or a job but a tangible person, an identity and maybe even a direction.

I'm sure that over the years I've ruled out a few things; I've come to know I am not this type of person or I'm not going to be interested in this or that. But I don't know that I've been able to, in a sense, learn enough about myself to get an idea of who I'm going to be. That to look ahead to the next 15 years and where I'll be is to look back at the past 4 years and where they've gone. You begin to wonder if artificially significant events like a graduation will be a turning point, just like the artificially significant event of going off to college. School is that weird time where you spend all your time accomplishing things so that you can accomplish more things in the future. And a recent graduation affords you the ability to be suspended in time between your old life as a youngster and your new life as an adult. There's an inherent inconsonance there.

I think it's why my instinct is to run back to school. The safe place; the place I've known since I began knowing.

It's a weird, interesting and scary time.

(And imagine if I hoisted all of this self-absorbed existential nonsense on an innocent passer-by?)