My school email inbox is full of reminders to sign up for graduation this upcoming May. I still haven’t even made an appointment for senior portraits, either, but in my defense, I always look so bad in those pictures. Where are the Snapchat filters to give me a little extra flair so that I can hide my face behind masks and pretty flower crowns? It’s just a scary, daunting thing to know that I’m finally getting to the end of this chapter of my life. Mostly because it was such a long one. One full of lessons learned and growing up, but that discussion is for another day because there is something bigger frying in my head at the moment.
I’m currently working as an intern for academic credit. It’s a pretty huge company, full of amazing opportunities in terms of where I see myself going in the future, and it pays! I also occasionally drop in at my old place of employment that I’ve worked as a temp since summer of 2015. It’s nice there, familiar and easy, but not entirely where I ideally see myself in the future.
Come early May, my internship will end, and I’ve got a lot of decisions to make. I have the opportunity to ask either of my employers for a full time job after I graduate, but I get insecure and wonder if they’ll even want to hire me. On top of that, I also have to keep in mind that I want to do my masters ASAP so that I don’t lose my school momentum. When I talked to my mom about this, she asked me why I was even bothering worrying about all this now. After such a long, hard few years of college, I deserved a break. She is insisting I actually sit around at home and relax, or go on a vacation. The idea seems tempting. I even reached out to my cousin in Australia about possibly coming down under for two weeks in June, but then I thought, did I want to slow down?
A few months ago, I was reading Mindy Kaling’s book, Why Not Me?, and there was a part in it where she talked about the term workaholics:
We do a thing in America, which is to label people ‘workaholics’ and tell them that work is ruining their lives. [...] And to some degree, I understand why the trope exists. It probably resonates because most people in this country hate their jobs. [...] The reason I’m bringing this up is not to defend my status as someone who always works. It’s just that, the truth is, I have never, ever, ever met a highly confident and successful person who is not what a movie would call a ‘workaholic.’ We can’t have it both ways. Because confidence is like respect: you have to earn it.
I’m not saying I’m a workaholic because I’m a 24 year old girl who loves to sleep all day, but I don’t hate work. I enjoy the office setting, I enjoy talking to a different group of people outside of school, and I don’t find mind daily commutes on a crowded train. Furthermore, I have really big dreams that won’t come true if I were to just sit around and not do anything for several months.
Maybe it’s naive because I’ve only been properly working for two years, or maybe I’m so over school and the mindset of my younger peers that I yearn for something new. Either way, I don’t want to completely let go of the working life. It isn’t a money thing, though that part isn’t bad, but it’s just having something to do. After years having homework and a place to go Monday to Friday, the idea of not having any obligations is strange and unfamiliar. It’s like the start of every summer vacation where the first few days feel like a weird daze. Like you actually can’t believe you have nothing to do. That can quickly get boring.
I have a few weeks to decide what I’ll be doing, but it feels like the weeks are passing by in a blur. Time is ticking, graduation day is quickly approaching, and I still don’t fully know what I want to do. Should I relax and actually enjoy my life or keep going? Maybe it would be good to keep my options open and dip my toes in here and there so that the universe will just naturally let things fall into place and lead me in the right direction.
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