As graduation approaches, I’m faced head-on with the “lasts.” Last class, last critique, last assignment. These things come at the end of every semester, but this time feels unique. It’s the definite end, the last lasts. Because after graduation, I’m heading into a life free of academia for the first time ever.
I’ve been revisiting a 2019 opinion piece written by Eric Londres ‘21, titled “On Stevens-death,” which I’d consider a kind of canonical piece at this point that I’m sure a lot of Stute alumni remember. I was a sophomore when it was published and couldn’t exactly relate to it just yet but knew I would as a senior, which turned out to be true.
To summarize, Eric argues that college life is like living in a bubble, which he calls “the world of Stevens.” You get used to your environment and place a lot of importance on what happens there, but once you leave the world, it’s like a death. You realize that a lot of experiences you had in that place are now small, insignificant, trivial. Suddenly there’s a whole other world out there.
It’s both stressful and exciting to have the entire world open for me after I graduate. Stressful because my only answer to people constantly asking me what I’m doing after graduation is, “I don’t know,” and exciting because I can go in a lot of different directions.
I’m not going to graduate school right away, and I don’t have a job lined up. I’m moving back home with my parents in New York and won’t be moving out for the next 1-2 years or so while I work and save up enough money to move out. Which I feel really grateful for – I’m sure there are college students all over the world who don’t have a safe home environment to return back to and maybe have no choice but to start living paycheck to paycheck on their own after graduation.
One thing I’m looking forward to is learning things on my own without being graded on them. Just since classes ended I’ve picked up my guitar again, bought a textbook to work on my Italian, and am drawing in my sketchbook regularly. I even have plans to get a ukulele soon and eventually learn bass guitar. It hit me all at once that I can learn anything I want and there’s no format or set of rules I have to follow. There’s no rubric; no set of expectations to meet for the sake of earning a grade.
Maybe this is all a bit juvenile, but I can’t wait for life without school. In a way, it feels like my life is just starting. Stevens-death has certainly hit me, in a good way, enabling me to move on and look toward the future. Let’s see what happens.
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