Adulting after graduating

I started cleaning my closet out, taking out clothes to be donated, to be given away and to be recycled. I googled sustainable ways to dispose household items (a great resource: www.recycleannarbor.org/). I have my cap and gown already for graduation, given to me by an alumni who is the same size. I’m all set.

But am I?

Ready is simply not a vocabulary that exists comfortably when we are graduating. We feel ready, yet when we graduate and return home, look for jobs, we feel in denial. We will soon lament the days when we had fun with friends, when we had the best lectures. Perhaps we’re a little too glad to be leaving the endless homework and projects behind. We know work isn’t necessarily better. There will be a lot of adulting to do. How scary.

I’m definitely ready to go home though. Four years spent mostly away from home + 5 years prior to that living in a boarding school has began to tire me out. Many things have happened while I was away and I am sick of only being able to get updates. Being present is what I deeply desire.

One senior of mine commented that being a student was more preferable because you could skip class, but you definitely can’t skip work. He jokingly said that we should do postgraduate studies, to get away from work entirely. While this is not sound advice, I certainly did not want to continue studying for now, especially since I’ve been doing it for 4 years. I need a change of scenery.

There is no getting away from adulting. Even though it is scary, we have to remember that we were raised for this purpose, to be a useful and independent citizen of this period. Things will not go the way we planned it to. We’ll just have to work around it, or accept that perhaps this wasn’t meant for us. Sometimes things work out in our favor, though we may never know till much later.

Long ago, I planned to study only psychology and win a government scholarship. Years later, I now have an even better scholarship that provides a job after graduating. I’m now majoring in both Economics and Psychology.

Despite having a secure job waiting for me back in Malaysia, I feel guilty. I see my friends scrambling to save money to try and stay here and find a job and apply for OPT. Others search online endlessly to find jobs at home. They wonder, what kind of jobs can they get in the not-so-great economy in Malaysia? What do I do with these feelings?

I accept that I am blessed. I’m not ready to adult, not ready to graduate but certainly ready to return home.