Musings of a Recent College Graduate

With a similar anticipation to watching a sick pet reach its final days, I felt my last semester at Carnegie Mellon encroach upon me–yet instead of a pet, I was bound to suffer the loss of an identity.

Conventional expectations denote that I should celebrate this milestone achievement. However, when the time came around, celebration was my last instinct.

I wanted to grieve. A funeral for the death of a life chapter felt more fitting than a graduation party.

Sunday, May 23rd was CMU’s Commencement Day. It was a very in-body experience. Here I am, in this long-envisioned moment of my life. For four years I had wondered what I would feel like, and especially, who I would be, on that very day…yet, I just kind of grew into my own shoes and realized I better start walking. This internal alignment was exacerbated in a moment of disturbing irony: the exact moment I stepped off campus grounds post-commencement ceremony, an email was pinged to me:

Perhaps it is due to living in a digital world for most of the past year, but this email brought the realization that my expensive, four-year subscription service just ended. Hollowing, is the gaping void within me! Now would be a great time to employ a new term that rings like deja-vu, but instead of “I feel like I’ve seen this before,” it’s, “I feel like I’m in a science fiction movie,” or, “why is my life literally a Black Mirror episode right now”.

Nonetheless, I was a graduate, no matter how estranged it felt. Flashback to about a year ago, I was convinced I could be a student forever; however, in those final undergrad weeks, I increasingly felt the urge to break out of a rut. I became increasingly impatient to entertain that which did not serve my highest creative process, whether it be classes, social interactions, or busy work. For the first time in my life, I truly struggled to focus on academics. My usual “ten steps ahead” approach was finally met with friction. Indeed, it is very realistic to attribute this lack of motivation to Zoom fatigue, as opposed to an academic burnout. I knew that, at least when I graduated, I knew I would no longer have to be on a video call for five to seven hours daily, in addition to the screen time attributed to homework, socialization, photo editing, personal projects, attempts to engage my figure skating team as I unexpectedly led us through a pandemic…

So, yes, the fact that my senior year was essentially entirely digitized put me on an unsustainable route of technological absorption. However, I should not understate that the nature of the work itself began to pale in comparison to the calling. The classes that did not cultivate my creative purpose became time lost to it. The attention I once channeled towards diligently watching my professor’s virtual face scroll through PowerPoint lectures was slowly sacrificed to my personal endeavors on another tab. I became increasingly impressed by my own ability to valuably chime in to class discussions when I only had 1/8 of my brain invested in it. After all, I knew I only had the mental energy for so many hours of computer time, so I had to be strategic about it.

Speaking of Zoom fatigue, the inexorable reality of an all virtual senior year brought the sense that something was missing. In many ways, I knew much of my college experience was severed in the irreversibly newfound digital world of March 2020. Truly, it felt like life dealt me the greatest blow of irony. For the greater part of three years, I was swimming against a relentless current that my peers so effortlessly knew how to navigate. Finally, at the turn of my final year, I could not only enjoy the swim, but show others how as well. I was very eager to bring my best self to the table, for all could benefit from that which I had overcome. I had emerged from years of living in survival mode ready to participate in the college experience with a stronger grip on myself than ever before.

And that, I did, to the best of my capacity in the given circumstances.

Thus, I continue to remind myself:

You have no proof of “what should have been”.

I have no proof that what I wanted–or what I expected–would have been best, or good for me at all. I had to shift my focus from what I lost, to what I had gained. Truthfully, what I had “lost” is merely an illusion–my unrequited vision of my senior year was just a projection of expectations. You cannot lose what you never actually had.

In order to find peace in that, I feel the urge to fathom my experience; to process it; to spread it on a table and conceptualize its entirety. I continue to reflect on all the seemingly insignificant moments that turned out to be the defining features of undergrad. Moments that I thought would just be fleeting glimpses of my experiences became unexpectedly illustrating features. Moments that I did not regard in any importance, no more than random snapshots of memory, became the major plotline. Moments I thought would be the supporting role, actually turned out to be the main character. Regardless of how downright awful and dreadful the moments often were, they were more physical, more human times. In hindsight, I choose to attribute meaning to even the most difficult moments in order to make peace with the past. Even the most dire times spent fighting against the current have shaped my experience in some way. They became a severed facet of a larger whole that I am grateful to have been a part of in spite of the struggles.

So, while some insist that my graduating year was '“robbed of experience!”–I know this is one perspective I have acknowledged and transcended. There is simply no reason to dwell on this. Though a valid point of view, I can confidently say that I brought my best self to the [virtual] table. I have learned that the best, perhaps the only way, to cope with the end of a chapter is to know–to truly have faith–that the future holds better things. Not to mention, my optimism feels like an act of rebellion within a culture that demonstrates a collective sense of resistance surrounding adulthood. The excitement, ambition, and faith I hold towards creating a rewarding, beautiful life for myself and others serves to combat the often pessimistic paradigm regarding “entering the real world”. I also understand that with every new chapter of my life, challenges and responsibilities increase, but the scale of reward adjusts. There is not one without the other.

Undoubtedly, my hope for the future is not immune to fears. I worry that I will never be as intellectually challenged as I was in these four years. Perhaps many are eager to transcend the constant mental CrossFit of higher education, but I will miss the intense structure of learning. This is certainly not something I anticipated to reflect upon fondly. Yet, I must remember the most important skill that these four years have taught me: the ability to seek discipline to develop myself. I will no longer be hand fed the challenges that transpire my intellectual, psychological, and creative growth; I have to find them for myself. The beauty of the next chapter is that I am now endowed with the tools and the freedom to build that enriching path according to my own design.

Thank you for taking the time to read about my experience. If it has, in any way, enlightened the perspective of your own, I would love to hear about it.