3B
Wednesday, November 22, 2017 // The Statement
Empath in the wild: Graduating
R
ecently, a panicky feeling has been
lingering in the back of my mind.
I’m entering the last semester of
my undergraduate education, and I
don’t know what I want to do when that’s over.
I, at the very least, know what city I want to be
in, but I don’t have housing secured and I don’t
have a job secured. I’ve
become
disenchanted
with my major, English —
that’s to say, I’ve become
disenchanted
with
literary criticism — and
I don’t know if I want to
“be a writer” and what
that might look like if I
did.
I’m working through big
questions like: What does
it mean to be an artist?
What does that look like
for me, outside of school?
How can I balance my
own creative endeavors
with engaging with my
community?
How
will
I sustain myself? Do I
want to make a living off
my writing, or do I want
writing to be something
I do outside of work?
What will I do if I don’t
write? What is my social
responsibility
in
this
political climate? These
questions roll into one
another and if I spend too
long thinking about any
one question, specifically,
I
drive
myself
crazy
because I come up with
so many more questions.
So, last weekend I was
celebrating my 22nd birthday: I went out to a
nice dinner on Friday and had friends over to
celebrate later that night. On Saturday, it was
really sunny and my boyfriend and I went out
to brunch, then took a long walk through the
park and made enchiladas for dinner. It was
a fantastic weekend — I was surrounded by
delicious food, people I love and a healthy dose
of sunshine before the winter hit.
But later that night, my friend and I were
hanging out and I just sort of burst into tears.
All the questions I’ve been thinking about
all semester poured out of me in a general
frustration and panic about what I was going to
do and whether anything I did mattered in the
grand scheme of things, after I graduated from
college.
I was expecting, from my friend sitting on the
other end of the couch from me, some assurance
that I would figure it out, and that I was a really
determined person who could do whatever I
wanted to. I wanted my friend to be there with
me, wallowing in this frustration about not
liking my major and not knowing what was the
best thing to do after I graduate — I wanted to
hear from someone else how hard it is to go out
into the world.
But this is not the feedback I received. At
first, I wondered why I wasn’t hearing more
affirmation. It was only after some of my tears
dried, after I released almost all my frustrations,
that my friend started speaking.
Basically, what he told me is that I would be
fine and I needed to stop wallowing. Barring
anything extreme happening, I’m going to
graduate from the University of Michigan with
a degree, lots of friends and a strong support
system in my family that will support me if I
need help. I’m white, and I’m a native English
speaker. Because of the kind of country we live
in, all of these things mean, collectively, that
I’m going to be fine. Sure, maybe I won’t have
the most fulfilling job ever right out of college.
Sure, I may feel a little lost for a while. But in the
grand scheme of things, life is likely going to be
more than OK for me.
I also received a healthy reminder that, in
comparison to so many others who live in the
United States — people who want to go to college
but haven’t had the opportunity, people who
immigrated here from another, non-English-
speaking country, people of color and people
with disabilities — I’m going to
be fine. As an upper-middle-class
white woman with lots of friends
and family close by, I have a lot
going for me.
My friend also reminded me that
— although this point is smaller
in scale than the ones previously
mentioned — I was in the middle
of my birthday weekend. I had so
much to be thankful for and yet
these individualistic, and kind
of self-centered questions, were
preventing me from inhabiting
the present moment, which had so
much to offer.
While I think there’s room
for my individual frustrations
about the uncertain nature of
my life after graduation, it’s
also
extremely
important
to
maintain
perspective.
Being
stuck in my head prevented me
from seeing myself as part of a
larger population of people in
this country — and ultimately the
whole world — who don’t have the
same kinds of opportunities and
advantages.
Being in my head, preoccupied
by these individualistic questions,
kept me from looking outside
myself to the extent that I wasn’t
seeing all the amazing things
happening around me. If I can’t
fully appreciate a celebratory
weekend like my birthday, then how could I go
about empathizing with others on a real level?
To a certain extent, I think the environment on
campus facilitates selfish thinking like this. I
became so future-oriented and so self-centered
leading up to that night that I couldn’t look
outside myself.
Since that weekend, I began seeing myself
as one part of a much larger whole. Instead of
dwelling on how uncertain my future is, I’ve
taken concrete steps to appreciate what I have
in the present: I’ve been doing yoga almost every
day and reaching out to friends I haven’t talked
to in a while, since I’ve been too busy trying to
force myself to “figure things out.” Moving past
my frustrations about my uncertain future is
definitely a process, but I can say I already feel
much better and much more balanced than I did
a week and a half ago.
BY REGAN DETWILER, COLUMNIST
ILLUSTRATION BY AMELIA CACCHIONE