I only just realized that I missed my regular Wednesday posting date; I apologize. This was finals week, and things have been a bit strange and hectic. I did my last final on Tuesday, but on Wednesday there were holiday packages to mail, and many a thing to check and double check to make sure I’d be ready for Friday. For tomorrow, at this point. Well, today, actually, since it’s a few minutes after midnight as I write this.
I’m graduating with my BA in Geology (second major in Japanese Language and Culture) tomorrow at around 11. I’m excited, to be sure. I’m off the hook for school, at least for one semester. No homework! No early classes! I can read what I want! I may even have some extra cash on hand since I can work more, though most of it needs to go toward the wedding.
A bit of it, I’m not sure how I feel about, though. I haven’t graduated from anything since I was in High School. I’ve elected this time around to not wear the funny robe and hat, since I just can’t get myself excited about being one face among hundreds in a stadium. I’ll be going to my department graduation, of course. And after? Well, I’ve put in my grad school applications; I imagine I’ll find out if I’m going to be going back to school in a month or two. What if I don’t? What if I do?
It’s funny, but you’d think someone less than a year away from being thirty would know what she’s going to do with the rest of her life. The more grown-up I become, though, the more I’m beginning to realize the dirty little secret of being grown-up. Older may mean a little more experienced, maybe even a little wiser, but as you slowly count the days by, the change is so small, so incremental that you never notice the difference until it’s been ten years and you’re wondering what the hell you were thinking when you were 19. I’m a different person than I was when I graduated high school, yet also still the same.
The end of an eleven year journey didn’t fill me with a sudden strong sense of my life calling. It’s really just left me with an incredibly expensive bit of paper and the same questions I’ve always faced. What do I want to be when I grow up? What am I good at? (Too many things, if I’m being honest with myself, to be willing to just pick one and stick with it.) Where will I be in another ten years? I don’t have any better idea now than I did when I was 18 or 19. And this expensive paper, this degree, what does it actually mean? To be honest, I don’t feel smarter than when I started out. Maybe now I know what various sedimentary structures look like, or the significance of the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors, or what Gender Queer Theory is, but knowledge has never been the same as wisdom. I may know more things, but I still approach many problems and wonders with a profound since of puzzlement, and deep down I’m still just as worried that this time, I may not figure out the solution.
Some small part of me wants to be afraid at this thought, because so many people my age and older make it look easy. They have plans. Some wanted to get married, some wanted careers, some wanted a family. Some knew what careers they wanted and got themselves there. Some knew what careers they wanted and didn’t. But I also know that I’m not alone, because we all have doubts, and I think that beneath the surface of any confident person that hasn’t crept across that terrible dividing line into the realm of the fanatic, there’s still that uncertainty, that question.
What do I want to be when I grow up? I still don’t know. Maybe in another ten years, I will. Or the ten years after that… or the ten years after that…