Growing up is hard to do: post-graduation fear

Even the Blue Jay appears to have grown up.

There he was, all seven adorable feet tall, wearing a tie and carrying a briefcase as he wandered about campus last Thursday.

He wasn't alone, either. I passed familiar face after familiar face, each disguised by suits and ties and nervous expressions.

How was it that people my own age were headed to the Career Fair to get grown-up jobs? We still have one more year left. It's just not time to face the grown-up world.

But apparently it was, as the campus was soon filled with hundreds of young alumni fresh from the grown-up world. As I battled the mountainous incline to the Young Alumni tent outside of Bloomberg, my mood worsened as I read the signs along the way:

For three short hours c9 you're in college again!

I would have kicked them had I not already been so winded.

I'm still in college, damn it. And if I spend one more moment browsing MonsterTrak or tweaking resumes instead of procrastinating over a beer at CVP, I'm going to vomit.

But alas, this presents a problem. I work at the Career Center. My job is to tweak resumes and help kids confront the grown-up world. The tie on the Blue Jay was my idea.

The reality is, I love my job. I've loved it for all four of the years I've had it. The Real World is out there and eventually we're all going to graduate into it. I love the fact that I've played a small part in helping my peers decide what they want to do once they get there.

But it's different now. Now, the students who sit in front of me with terrified looks on their faces are my classmates.

I have no idea what I want to do with my life, they say.

And you know what? It's just not true.

Most of us know what we want to do with our lives. We want to do what we've always enjoyed and dreamed of doing -- for some of us, that's writing. For others, it's making films or fighting genocide in Darfur. Unfortunately, those don't seem like viable options for kids with $160,000 educations and health insurance that expires the day after we graduate.

So I guess that's why lately it seems as though I've been spending most of my time helping kids "tweak" their resumes into the investment banking/consulting mold, even if they're Film and Media Studies majors whose work is playing in film festivals around the world.

Granted, there are a lot of kids who are genuinely passionate about investment banking and consulting, and seem to have been as such since birth. Sometimes I envy them: as a realist who has known since the age of five that I wanted to be a writer, I've tried every other career path that could possibly ensure a more regularly occurring paycheck. I've done finance; I've done marketing; I've done copy writing; I've done public relations -- and man, I wish I found stocks fascinating. But I don't.

So I took a practice LSAT. It went well. But as this weekend's test date approached, I had a thought: Why on Earth would I take the LSAT?

On Saturday morning I went for a run and then to Smoothie King. Excellent choice: Irresponsibility is the best part of being young.

Well, not according to any of the "young" alumni I caught up with this weekend. First there were the ones that started yawning at 11:30 p.m., already too adjusted to their nine-to-five schedules. Then there were the ones that smiled weakly as they explained how much they loved their jobs.

"I get free parking!" one said.

Free -- now there's the old college spirit.

But the same question keeps pushing its way into my mind: why should this be so difficult, so frightening, so overwhelming? How is it that I am surrounded by the best, the brightest, the most promising -- and yet we're all terrified of our futures?

Because, I guess, for the first time in our lives, our futures are slightly out of our control. We've spent the past 20 years in a system in which if we studied hard enough, we knew would make the grades we wanted. Success was defined for us and all we had to do was achieve it. But once we graduate, all we can pursue is our own happiness -- and that's something we can only define for ourselves.

But it's not something easily summarized in an objective statement on top of a resume, nor in a cover letter or job description. There's no point in beating ourselves up because we can't seem to do it -- it can't be done.

What if we embraced the fact that when June rolls around, we can do whatever the hell we want?

Sure, it's terrifying, but so was my Political Economy class with Professor Blythe. If I can survive that, certainly I can handle being honest with myself about how much money I want to make, and what I want to spend 45 hours a week doing.

Because, at this point in our lives, we can literally do anything. Maybe I'll move to Paris and waitress, or work on a ski lift for the winter. Right now, I'm thinking I'll try and make it as a writer -- unfeasible as that may be.

If I can make a giant tie for a seven-foot tall bird, I have a feeling that things will be okay.