As I count down the days until I graduate college, I feel the looming pressure to remain productive and professional in my post-graduate existence. Many of my peers have jobs lined up, internships and volunteer programs only an acceptance away, and detailed 5-year plans. Meanwhile, I have no idea what the f*ck I’m doing come May 10th.
Like a Disney princess with the incessant urge to discover something new — to escape a glamorously mundane kingdom with an animal sidekick on her shoulder — I desire something more than a solid career and an impressive educational resume. Everyone who knows me is well aware of my current dedications: I am pursuing a double major in Psychology and Spanish, minoring in Sports Journalism just for fun, working as a personal trainer and group fitness instructor, leading a team of editors as Editor-in-Chief for my chapter of Her Campus, and constantly discovering new hobbies while also dedicating much of my headspace to close friends and family. And yet, in only a few months, I will have no label on my identity and for the first time in my life, have the opportunity to be anything other than a student.
For the first time in 22 years, I will be utterly and absolutely free.
The least I can do is respect the Disney princess in me: I refuse to do anything but pursue my dreams, explore my passions, and broaden my potential beyond what has been expected of me and other college graduates since the beginning of time. I am too wonderful, find joy in too many intricate details of life, and have too many childhood dreams to accept the two-pronged fork in the road that is post-grad life: choosing between more education or initiating a career. VOMIT. PUKE. GROSS. DISGUSTING. NO. NO. NOOOO.
I must escape the cog and embrace my creativity. I must pursue my passion for bees and finally learn how to beekeep. I must care for cows, donkeys, sheep, goats, or even horses because I have been fascinated by farm life for far too long. I must grow my hair down my back, letting it knot and tangle and curl as it pleases in order to rediscover my inner care-free child. I must play with clay, splatter paint on canvases, break shards of glass, and carve metal with a hot knife. I must go barefoot, collect dirt under my fingernails, eat fruit straight from the tree with my bare hands, and allow myself to really and truly reek of sweat.
I must do something more after decades of mundane note taking, orderly schedules, and pages upon pages of mind numbing academic readings.
When I graduate college, I want to build a shelter. I want to chop down trees with an axe, collect moss for insolation, and carve out the side of a hill with nothing but a shovel and my bare hands. I want to whittle precise angles on logs, placing them oh-so-close together and packing any gaps with mud. I want to build a fireplace with stones I’ve hauled to my shelter and then light the kindling I collect, warming my hands over the licking flames. I want to sleep in a bed of pine needles, listening to the swaying breeze and distant coyote yips– my only worry being whether or not a rainstorm would flood the cracks in my roof.
This shelter is an unintentional symbol for my requirement of escaping societal patterns and finally doing something for myself.
I want to create with no pressure to be anything but an artist, write with no looming questions about grades or due-dates, and build something other than my resume.
This time, I want to sit down and finally write the book people have been waiting for, brush the cows who I speak of loving so much, and make my own f*cking honey.
I am well aware of my capabilities as a student and exercise professional — I know I am incredibly smart, boast impressive leadership skills, and am a prized and talented employee — but if there’s anything I’ve learned in college, it’s the importance of following your dreams and finding yourself. I must find something more fulfilling than a promising job. There is nothing that simultaneously haunts me and bores me more than the nauseating process of graduating college and immediately filing into the mundane factory line that is a capitalist and traditional life.
I see the world in too shiny and bright of a filter to limit myself by not pursuing my creativity. The 5 year old who had purple Disney castles stenciled on her bedroom wall deserves so much more than just a happy ending: I expect my middle to also be glamorous and full of love.