That Time When Graduation Was A Year Ago

Yesterday was graduation day for the class of 2014 at Gettysburg. Even before my newsfeed was awash with orange and blue and sentimental statuses, I was feeling nostalgic. Today marks exactly one year since I graduated, and it feels like it was only yesterday, just a world away. How could a year possibly have passed? How could it have not?

I confess that my overwhelming feeling upon realizing that it had been a year since graduation was a sense of disappointment. Shouldn't I have accomplished more a year out of college? I can't say "I just graduated in May" anymore, so shouldn't I have done more? Shouldn't I have made a bunch of friends with people where I live? Shouldn't I have completed things? Shouldn't I miss Gettysburg less? But here I am, living at home, mostly hanging out with my family when I'm not working. I don't have a high powered, exciting job where I am changing the world and/or making lots of money. I haven't fallen in love and I am not substantially closer to being a clinical psychologist or a mom.

And that thinking is so easy to fall into, because I have been trained so well. Make goals. Execute them. Do at least as well as your peers, preferably better. Do great work. I loved the Gettysburg atmosphere, and I thrived in that performance driven, high octane setting (if you consider the level of stress I could sustain for weeks at a time thriving). But the dark side of that is that I can instinctinvely think critically without acting compassionately. My mind twists the truth and throws in some half-truths and little lies until I look at the last year and feel like I have failed.

That is probably stupid and definitely inaccurate. My plan was to move home, find a research position to get the experience I need to get into grad school, and pay off student loans as quickly as possible. I did, in fact, find a research position that I can commute to from home... thanks, God! And its not high powered or a high salary, but someone is paying me to do research, which is exactly what I was looking for. I am paying off my student loans while admittedly mooching some groceries, wifi, and below market rent from my mother. But since I am rather fond of my mother, this is kind of a win-win situation. And why should I feel lame about having out with my family? I love them, and I won't always get to spend time with them like this. My baby cousins (read: every cousin who is younger than me, even if they are 6'2'') will grow up and move away one day. When I go to grad school, I will not be able to take my Mam-maw shopping on Sunday afternoons, and will she be around to take shopping when I am finished grad school? Speaking of school, if I were to hypothetically be either a clinical psychologist or a mom before I finished grad school, that would be absolutely terrifying (in the first scenario) or mildly terrifying and poor planning (in the second scenario). Seeing patients before getting the education/licensing to practice or having a baby while attaining said licensing are so not high on my list of things to do, and thus if I were substantially closer to these things one year out of college, it might actually not be a great sign.

Melissa and this kitten were both at
Focus this year... don't you wish you
were there, too? I know I do.

And yes, I do miss Gettysburg. I wish that I still had shenanigans every Wednesday at 10, that I still lived with 5 of my best friends, and that anytime I wanted to hang out with someone we could just get a meal together because we ate at all the same places. I wish that I had just gotten home from Focus, and that I was energized and sleep deprived and so excited about being on mission with the church. I wish the friends I have here (because I do have some, my heart just believes lies sometimes) knew me as deeply, encouraged and challenged me as frequently, and pointed me to Christ as well as my friends from Gettysburg. But this is what its like to have good friends. You miss them when you haven't seen them for a day, and you miss them when you haven't seen them for months and months. It takes a long time to build new friendships that are as strong.

I think it is okay to miss college, even though it makes me feel a bit like I am doing something wrong. I don't want college to be the best years of my life. But it would be okay if college accounted for some of the best years of my life. I think that is the tension I am feeling as I compare this first year out of college to the four years that came before. Its true that this past year was hard in different ways than before and that it was lacking some things that my heart tells me it wants again in future years. But it was another year of life, and I enjoy having those :) It was filled with blessings and things to be thankful for, and it was not a waste of time.

So here are a few highlights from my first year as a post-bacc:
-Seven of my friends got married, and every wedding was a delight. I loved each individual wedding ceremony, and getting to share in their joy, and also all those built-in reunions.
-For months I got as much sleep as my body actually needed (talk about seasons of life... this one is definitely fleeting). It was glorious. And now I might get up earlier every morning than I have in my life, but at least I don't do homework till at least midnight every night.
-I got a job offer totally out of the blue months after I had submitted an application and pursued other institutes and researchers with no success. Yep, it was totally not my fault that I got this job.

"I am not afraid.
I was born to do this."
-Jeanne d'Arc

-I found a church that I absolutely love. I get to live in a place with a bible-preaching church that loves to worship God with a gospel-centered community who want to grow and become more like Jesus? Is this real life?
-When my brain isn't consumed with exams, papers, and research reports, there is room for creativity to come out and play. I've been playing the piano again and making artwork and creating things. And none of them are masterpieces (although I am quite proud of the sweater and the quilt), but it feels good to create just because I can.
-God has used this time to soften my heart to the idea of adoption, to help me see the value of intervention at every stage for every person, and to understand how attachment (you know, that field of psychology I would be happy spending my whole life in) relates to God's character and redemptive plan. It was so good (and wise, probably) of him to do this when I am exactly where I am now. If He had done this later in life when I wasn't young, broke, and single, I probably would have freaked out about life and thought that He was telling me to do something I didn't want to do. Instead I see little hints of changing desires and and awareness of how much more growing I have to do. And how much more I need Jesus than I realized.
-I've been growing. Slowly. Sometimes it feels agonizingly slow, and I am not content with the pace. But the lessons I am being taught seem to take a lot of time. Perhaps it is the nature of these lessons, perhaps I'm a slow learner. But God is at work in my life, and I am grateful for it.

The View From Seven Months

I have been, admittedly, rather sparse with the life details. Part of that was that there was nothing exciting to tell. Part of that was that there was too much to tell. Although I am a sharer, I like to develop some trust before I spill my guts, and there is no way to do that with the entire interwebs. So rather than a blow-by-blow of life, which would be aptly titled “Four Weddings and A Funeral,” I will give you a current update:

What does seven months out of school look like?

1. It looks like paying student loans. Those pesky things come due six months out of school, and by the grace of God, I can pay mine. This is seriously worth being happy about, and I look forward to owing a little less money each month when I successfully make a payment.

2. It looks like working part time jobs to pay said loans. I am working at a wedding venue, which has prepared me fairly well for this recent wedding season (my friends are odd and mostly got married in the winter instead of the summer). I have been working at Bath & Body Works for the holidays, and something about good-smelling things being perfectly arranged in rows makes it a rather enjoyable place to work. I also have been working for a medical billing company dealing with insurance companies. This has been instructional, and also cemented the fact that I never want to work for an insurance company.

Earlier in life, I wanted to be a cat farmer
...but seriously.

3. It looks like endless (and perseverant! I am an optimist!) job searches. I have a few leads in this area that I am really hoping to hear back from in the next few weeks. Hopefully, someone in the near future will pay me to do science! I’m keeping the dream alive. When things are not going according to plan, it is a good opportunity to re-examine your calling and decide if you’re sure that’s where you are being called. If I didn’t feel led to pursue this whole PhD clinical psych thing, it would be stupid of me not to do something more reasonable. But, after some thought, I am still being called to unreasonableness :)

4. It looks like slow and sometimes faltering efforts to settle here and make friends. I have found it difficult to commit to—and succeed at—the effort of making post-grad friends, but I am not the only one. From friends with set timelines (“My grad program is half over and I’m only here for a year total”) to others who really want to make new friends but find the process slow compared to making friends in college, it seems to be a struggle shared by most of my friends who graduated with me or the year before. Its hard to get lunch with people when you both work different jobs, its hard to get together regularly when you live twenty minutes apart by car instead of three minutes on foot, and its hard to be new in town without an incoming class of people who are in the same boat.  But I did have coffee (figuratively speaking) with a girl this week, and it was delightful to have life chats. Yes, I had life chats this week with someone that I met since graduation. It was magical.

I’m not necessarily telling you to prepare for these things if you will be graduating in 2014, nor do I expect the graduated among you to have had the exact same experience as I am having (although if you are, you and I should definitely have life chats sometime). This is just where I am right now. Sometimes I am content, other times I am not. Sometimes I am happy, other times I am not. Sometimes I am busy, other times I wear my ugly sweater all day and no one is around to judge me. Sometimes I snuggle with cats, other times my cats refuse to snuggle. I am trying to “give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

(This was a snuggle time)

P.S. Also, after reading this blog written by a pretty wise man I know, I decided to read the bible as fast as I can starting January 1^st. I have never read straight through from Genesis to Revelation in order before,  so this should be an adventure. Thus, technically, seven months out of school also looks like Genesis… but hopefully Exodus soon. I’ll let you know.

P.P.S. For those of you who also feel like your attempts to accomplish something are like this little lizard hunter's, here are some cats who didn't make it through 2013 quite the way they planned... 

Dear Freshman,

This is not an open letter. I find myself irritated when people write 'open letters' that aren't really to the person they addressed it to, but are actually to the rest of the world about the person they addressed it to. To be fair, I frequently write letters to inanimate objects that serve the same purpose as open letters, but the following is not a letter to springtime or my laptop. This is a draft of a letter to my little cousin (he's a foot taller than me, but whatever) that I am giving him when he leaves for college this week. Most of my readers don't need this advice, but I figured I would submit it to you all (1) for revising in case I missed anything glaringly important or (2) if you have freshmen in your life. Of course I have omitted things, but that is because there is a big gap between the length of advice I could give to freshmen and the length I can expect my particular freshman to read :) These are just the things I realized that I wanted him to know while I was attempting to sleep one night... 

Dear [Freshman],

Congrats on going to school… I’ll admit it, college has been some of the best years of my life (although I expect there will be more fun to come after this) so I know you are in for an adventure. I figured since I was basically just there, I should tell you some things I learned along the way or had kind upperclassmen tell me when I first got to campus. 

1.     College is a time to do stupid, fun things (I have done many of those). It is not, however, a time to do stupid, dangerous things or stupid, illegal things. Don’t forget the difference.

…On a related note, freshman in a herd tend to do lots of stupid, dangerous, illegal things at the very beginning of school… the upperclassmen and staff at Gettysburg used to call the first few weeks that freshman were on campus 'the red zone' because freshmen were being dumb either to impress everyone else or because their parents weren't there and they had more freedom than they knew what to do with. Just keep your head.

…On another related note, I think I have already talked to you about the alcoholism that runs in our family? It’s worth mentioning again. I won’t bore you with all of the genetics and psychology (I could!), but I will tell you that alcohol affects me differently than most of my friends. Just watch out for that.

2.     Your honor is something that is both valuable and difficult to keep. Its worth it be an honorable guy.

…Watch out for the people around you, both the guys and the girls. Fun fact: 67% of men in college DON’T rape anyone! It goes without saying that you better be in that 67%. But a ton of rapes and sexual assaults happen on college campuses, and I know way too many girls this has happened to (you do too, although you probably don’t realize it). This means that people around you—or at least physically near you on campus—are going to be assaulted. If every college guy who didn’t rape anyone also prevented sexual assault when it was in danger of happening near them, you and I would know less people who have been assaulted. As much as our society likes to focus on how equal guys and girls are, there are some instances in which guys, in general, have more power than girls. Frankly, you have a greater ability to prevent rape than I do. With power comes responsibility, and all that. Be honorable regardless of how the people around you are behaving.

3.     Make friends with the kind of people you actually want to be friends with. I promise that those people are there, but it might take awhile to find them.

…I met some of my best friends in college in the first week or so of school. But that’s not the case with most of my friends, and I am not friends with most of the people I met in the first few weeks of school. In fact, I didn’t really begin to be friends with one girl until the end of my sophomore year, and I am going to be in her wedding in December. I didn’t meet some good friends until I was a senior. So don’t worry about finding the people who will become your closest friends... you will eventually. Just when you do find them, become friends :) 

…On a related note, get involved in a Christian fellowship on campus! I’m not going to pester you about this one because you are a big boy and your faith is up to you, but getting involved with the fellowship at Gettysburg literally changed my life. And my relationship with God. And who I became friends with. It was the best decision ever, and I had no idea when I got to campus that I should even look for a Christian fellowship.

4.     There will always be one or two huge things that mark you as a freshman. At my school, it was people actually using the lanyard and ID card holder the college gives at move-in for their keys and ID card. I would recommend not doing whatever that particular thing at your school is. Honestly though, don’t work too hard not to look like a freshman, because you are going to clearly look like a freshman to everyone else for the first month or two anyway. Just chill out about it and don’t use the lanyard they give you for your key :)

You are going to be totally fine. I have faith in you. College is awesome. If you ever need anything, you have my number. I love you!

-Christiana

Have I forgotten anything? Made any terrible errors? Let me know :)

Of course cats don't get to go to college. But the policy on pets visiting for a weekend was a littleeeee unclear my sophomore year, and this picture mayyyy have been taken in Tudor House. Possibly. (And the fire alarm might possibly have gone off while Lady M was visiting, causing my roommate to run around our room trying to find my cat in a building that she feared was on fire. Luckily my roommate liked cats... and the building did not, in fact, burn down)