When you are in school, you are behind a wall of books that occupy all of your time. When you look up from your books, all you see is more. Being in school makes you forget that there is a whole different world behind your wall of books. That world, which is always just beyond your vision during your years of school, is a vast wasteland of uncertainty. You don’t know what’s going to become of your well being, your relationships, or your career.
Now you arrive at your senior year of university, the final stage in your life long obligation to education. It’s the first time that you can see beyond the wall of books that’s always been in the way of you and the rest of your life. Once seniors see what lies ahead of them, they have to make one of the following choices.
First, after being exposed to the vast wasteland of uncertainty, many choose to postpone adulthood, by using the wall of books as a shield for another few years while earning a graduate degree. Others climbed on top of the wall of books years ago and have used their elevated vantage point to scout out and secure their future career paths. These people no longer view post-grad life as a wasteland of uncertainty, but instead can’t wait to topple their wall of books and embrace the future. The third option is embracing the uncertainty of the wasteland head on and without preparation.
I’ve chosen the third option, and my the senior transition has felt less like a transition and more like I’m getting pushed off the wall of books like a pirate on the plank. Of course, this is entirely my fault. I’ve always had the opportunity to secure my future, but I spent my first two years in community college thinking I was never going to get what I wanted. Then I achieved my dream and actually got to move to Isla Vista, where I spent my junior year living out all of my hedonistic aspirations. Now, in my senior year I’ve gotten everything I’ve wanted: a satisfying job, a compassionate girlfriend, intimate friendships, and endless new experiences. I have this weight on my shoulders that most parts of the life I love are going to come to an end in 8 months.
I’ve only just now began assembling my tools to survive after the postgrad wasteland, with my main tool being my writing ability. I’ve wanted to be a culture writer since highschool, but in my final year of schooling it’s my first time enrolling in a journalism class, and even then only because of my girlfriend’s encouragement to pursue my career goal. It was in this web journalism class that I realized the necessity for me to actually poke my head out from behind the wall of books, to stop shielding myself from the future.
I learned this because I met some of my classmates who had similar goals, and these people are the ones who made the choice to use the wall of books as a stepping stone rather than a shield. One woman has already been published in The Fader, and several others have been interning at the local newspaper, the Santa Barbara Independent. I was proud of my multimedia experience: being a videographer, having hosted a podcast, and writing my own blog, but other people have been paid as video editors, and have gotten their photos published by REI. I’m 8 months away from having to survive in the wasteland and I don’t know if I have enough time to catch up.
I am completely in love with my life, but the life I am in love with will end with a celebratory flurry of graduation caps on June 17th. My life from June 18th onward, AKA the rest of my life, is theoretically what my 16 years of school has been preparing me for, but is actually the only thing in my life that has felt impossible for which to prepare. Anything can happen, which is why I don’t know whether to fully embrace my new found but ultimately temporary bliss, or to spend my last year of safety preparing for the wasteland.
Written By Taylor Kalsey during Sociological Methods and French Social Theory Classes
Art by Zdzislaw Beksinski
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