Freefall: the place between where I was and where I will be

All through college, there is one question that seems to always come up: where can I park to avoid getting a ticket? Also, what do you see yourself doing after graduation? Maybe you’re a med student who has dreamed of being a nurse since you were a child and know wholeheartedly that you belong working in a hospital. Or maybe, like me, you spend all four years with a vague idea of things you would like to do and still only have a muddy picture of your ideal career going into your final semester. No matter how you answer that question, the truth is that nothing is absolutely certain, and no plan is completely life-proof. You’ll find yourself in a freefall at some point, where you’re moving forward, but you can’t feel it. You’re going to have to land eventually, but there is only so much that you can control about where you end up. You can choose where to jump out of the plane and equip yourself with all the necessary tools, but gravity and the force of life will act on you regardless. Wherever I land, I just hope that I hit the ground softly.

Before I dive into what I’ve been doing post-graduation, I want to give you a quick run-through of what my life looked like pre-graduation. When I was five, I transferred out of kindergarten and – OK, I’ll skip that part for now, but it does impact the beginning of my college story. I started my freshman year at Augusta University as a 17-year-old with little certainty in my chosen track (shocking, considering that fact I was a child). I decided to major in psychology based on two factors: I enjoyed my AP class enough, and I could get a decently paying job with it as long as I went to grad school. While I could still see myself having a happy career in this field, I never felt sure about my choice and with each semester, my doubts about whether it was right for me only grew. I made it to the second semester of my sophomore year before I finally found something that I liked even more than psychology. I enrolled in Intro to Public Speaking to fulfill my required communication credit, and it all finally clicked for me. You can major in this stuff?! I love talking! And writing! And not having to go to grad school!

So, as I started my junior year, I completely switched tracks to study communication. I did tack on a minor in psychology, though, because I still found it interesting and had most of the credits already anyways. As I crammed as many COMM classes into my schedule as possible, I discovered that I also had a passion for media production. In hindsight, those sparks had always been there and had someone pitched the communication major to me before I enrolled, I probably would have taken that path from the beginning. There’s no use in dwelling on “what ifs” now, though, and besides, I don’t think I would go back and change my experience if I could. I learned a lot through my experience and still managed to graduate on time with a degree in something I love. Isn’t that the goal?

Anyways, enough of the “before”; let’s talk about the “now”. Since I graduated 3 months ago, my life has taken some pretty dramatic shifts. In the first two weeks post-graduation, I performed my final recital in a 12-year dance career, left my nearly 4-year job in a workplace that I loved dearly, and moved 10 hours north into a “I don’t really have a place to live right now, so I’ll just float around family members guest rooms and couches” situation. I am not sharing this information to complain, though. While this change has been bittersweet, I am grateful for where I am in life and for the huge amount of love and assistance from my family and friends. I am privileged to have such a strong support system around me that I was able to enjoy a (mostly) relaxing summer with no need to worry about a job, school, place to live, etc. I am sharing this with you to reiterate the point I made earlier about it being alright to not have everything figured out. At least, I hope it is, because I have a lot of things to work on and process.

Which brings me to the “why’ of all this. Why am I starting Post-Grad Processing, and why should you care? I might not have a great answer to the second question yet, but I can give you my reasoning for the first. For one, there is a great deal of thoughts, emotions, and concerns that come with this transition I’m undergoing, and putting them all into words is not only a way to practice what I’ve learned as a communicator but is also a sort of self-therapy. More importantly, I hope that I can reach you as the reader through my story. Whether you are just stepping into your college career or stepped out of it a long time ago, I want you to be able to see your own journey reflected in mine. I hope these weekly discussions provide some comfort in the uncomfortable unknowns that are just a part of life, and you learn how to process the in between moment alongside me.

Moving forward, you can expect weekly updates every Saturday, as well as a more in-depth podcast episode that will be linked at the bottom of every post. Here’s the link to episode 1, where I basically just talk even more about myself and reintroduce everything I talked about today:

https://rss.com/podcasts/postgradprocessing/1125353/