adulthood

This weekend some of my great friends from college are coming to town.

These wonderful people are those I shared many sleepless nights and emotions with last year as we planned and executed the 16th annual 24-hour UNC Dance Marathon.  We are reuniting this weekend to see the 17th annual Dance Marathon and celebrate the awesome work this year’s leaders have accomplished.  At this point in our post-graduation lives, there are a few topics that inevitably come up each time there is a reunion.

We talk about our jobs or graduate school programs and how much we like or dislike our roles in these areas.  The topic of who will be the next to get married along with predictions on when they will get engaged comes up (we’re looking at you, Kelsey).  There will be some reminiscing of our college days and the roles we had at this point last year, with so many memories of Dance Marathon.  Mixed into the conversation will be spatterings of how our lives now are so different from our college routines, and maybe how none of our experiences in college could have prepared us for where we are now.  We have had these conversations before, but we still enjoy them and care about each other, so we continue to have them.

In college, no one really prepares you for adulthood and the real world.  You may have an internship that teaches you important skills for the field of work that interests you, and the most common question in your senior year will be, “so, what are you doing next year?”  But no one prepares you for the diffusion of all of your friends, the change from living within walking distance to everything to having to drive to and from work in rush hour traffic, or going from a fluid schedule with spurts of free time to long days in an office with no spring break.  Routines change quickly and days suddenly seem short.

Almost a year after graduating, we have figured out new routines to fit our working schedules, learned an appreciation for our parents who balanced work and family, picked up hobbies and found that not everything can be done in a day.  We try hard to cook our own meals every night and every now and then we will even cook a delicious, elaborate meal.  We never thought we would be so excited to clean the bathroom sink and it is an accomplishment when the laundry moves from the washing machine to the dryer within a day, forget about folding, that can wait for tomorrow….or next week.  We pack our lunches like the good first grader…I mean, first-year employee…that we are and try to stick to a budget for our expenses and for generosity.  True, there is no homework, per se, but there are some longer days and definitely no nap-times.  We earn money for our work, which is awesome and empowering and surely helps with that aforementioned budget. Some days I still feel like I was shoved off a cliff into adulthood, sometimes I feel like I am the responsible graduate I was prepared to be.  But this is it, we have arrived in the post graduate world whether we were ready or not.

I am excited to see my friends this weekend and to catch up and celebrate Dance Marathon.  In college, we all had the common bond of working so hard together for this one cause and one purpose.  Now that we have graduated, our group is spread across the state and across the country doing everything under the sun, but, in the midst of our busy adult lives, we still want, and try hard, to keep up with each other.  So this weekend, we will relish in the company of our friends, in the lives we touched while in college, and in the brunches, the stories and the conversations we will share with each other.  So cheers, to friends, to Dance Marathon and to adulthood.

 

Photos by Ying-Ao Zhang and Graham Terhune Photography