“Yeah, you guys are probably graduating at the worst time right now.”
When I used to gather around family members that I would only see once or twice a year during holidays like Thanksgiving and such, there was always that dreaded question that I would hope no family member would ask me,
“So, what are you doing after college?”
And then, I would stand there, with a fake smile masking my stone-cold eyes that were trying to cool down that slightly annoyed fire burning from within my body. Why did this question bother me so much? They more than likely did not mean it in a condescending way, and I know that it was probably more of a reflection of me being frustrated that I did not know the answers myself.
Do I lie? Do I make up something so that they can let me breathe while accepting that I may not have all the answers to “what I’m going to do with my life” by the age of 21?
Plus, even if I do have a clear sense of what I want to do with my life right now, a part of me knows that an “unconventional” plan will never satisfy their curiosity, so I end up just blurting out the first vague thing that comes out of my mouth.
Anyways, maybe some of you guys can relate to that, or maybe it’s the opposite – maybe you had set plans that you made for yourself, an internship or job lined up, and then suddenly, BAM, just like that, you were faced with queen Corona yelling out “SUCKERRR” in your face. For some reason, I imagine the virus as a female? Maybe it’s her persistence and power? I don’t know, man, but she has proven herself to be a force to not be reckoned with.
I just attended my brother’s drive-through graduation the other day. He’s graduating high school, while I’ll be graduating college at the same time. Our parent’s fridge is just going to be covered by photos of us in our bedrooms to show off to their guests at this point lol. “Did they actually graduate?” they’ll ask themselves years from now. Regardless, his graduation was actually pretty neat despite everything going on. One family was allowed one car, so we just happened to have a truck where his close friends rode in the open trunk (because that’s totally legal), and we dropped him and his other graduating friend off in the front of the building for a quick photo op before he jumped back in the car.
If you’re a graduating college senior from Zoom University like I am and won’t have the luxury of a drive-through, you either feel one of three ways: unfazed, really fazed, or somewhat fazed. I have gone through a mixture of all of those, and have settled into the unfazed state of mind regarding having online graduation. UW asked us to submit our graduation photo the other day, and I did not submit it because it just wasn’t on my list of priorities. Maybe UW knew that this was going to happen, so they did have a cap and gown template where you could put a picture behind to look semi-animated as if you just jumped into a video game of some sort. Completely weird and hilarious. Also, my head and body dimensions would have just not fit in that. Just no.
Anyways, I know that there isn’t really a big message that I am trying to convey with this rant, but all that I have to say is that it doesn’t really help to complain about our circumstances as graduates. Unless that is, you’re trying to express yourself to try and relate to other people going through the same thing (as I was trying to do above). Instead, we can take this pandemic as a signal to try and put some of the knowledge that we have acquired throughout school to try and not be idiots. To continue to learn, and to do what we think is right. We will all be okay, and despite how easy it is to look on the negative side of things, it’s now our job to look for the silver lining in the situation or work to create our own.
I mean, how fulfilling was a four-hour-long ceremony listening to long speeches while wearing the least flattering outfit gonna be anyway, amirite?