Student Blog: Post-Grad Limbo

My first year of college is over and for some reason, nothing seems to have changed. I’m still lost on where my life is going, let alone where the next year is going, and I still feel like I’m just laying in post-high school degree limbo. I’m still trying to find the right school and I’m still trying to accept the change that was solidified when I moved my tassel. 

It’s not that I want to go back to high school and it certainly isn’t that I don’t want to go to college. I just still feel caught in the limbo that sits between high school graduation and the first day of college. I am ‘kicking and screaming’ on the inside.

“What I used to be able to pass off as a bad summer could now potentially turn into a bad life.” --Max, Kicking and Screaming 1995

A year ago on college decision day, May 1st, 2022, I thought my future was going to be set– that I’d have my college decision on college decision day. I chose and was committed to a school. All my other offers had expired. But no. During 4th period that day I received an email from my dream school– the school I couldn’t afford but continued to dream about– saying that I still had till the 3rd at midnight to accept their offer. I thought my decision was over, solidified, but my NYU journal pages from middle school continued to scream in my ear pushing for some possibility for the dream that covered them to come to life. I caved and double-committed. 

I still don’t understand why I did it, well I can and it’s a crummy answer: I had hope. I wanted that feeling of accomplishment of ‘getting in’ to stay longer. I still wanted that possibility on my plate even though I knew I’d have to choose groans over loans. But throughout the entire decision process, no matter how much I extended it, I kept thinking, “In a few months you’ll know.” But here I am again. I am transferring. 

A few more months and I’ll know. Right?

My dream school is still (financially) out of reach, even with my AA knocked off of the tuition bill. I continue my hunt to find a school that is a fit for me or at least good enough for the next two years. But that is another thing. Since I was able to knock out my AA degree within my first year of college, I now only have two more years ahead of me. And if the rest of the years are anything like the first, time-wise, they will fly. I could be in cap and gown in 2025 and I fear that I’ll still have this feeling of limbo. Uni will be out and I will have an undergraduate degree to paste on my wall. It will feel like another summer, but a summer with no end. No classroom to go back to, no classmates to see again. I fear that Max’s pessimistic comment could feel true. 

But there is always grad school. 

But you also have to choose and afford grad school. 

“A few more years and I’ll know…”

This statement is justification and preservation for my current worries and problems in life. I rely on life, the future me, God, the universe, fate, etc. to solve my uncertainties and my worries. But no matter how much I rely on the future, I continue to worry.

I used to be a huge worry wart– I also had warts and truly believe my worrying was the cause for them. I’d constantly be thinking of the “if”s–no matter how impossible they seemed. My hands would get clammy and I’d rub them together constantly trying to brush off all the sweat and anxiety they held. I used to worry about everything. At one point in my life, all I could worry about was death and the possibility of losing the people I loved. 

Worries about my academic and professional career started in middle school. Specifically in math class when we were doing simple ‘find x’ problems. It was one of our first homework quizzes and I got C. I had all the right answers but I didn’t show my work. Devastating right? A C on a middle school homework quiz. I found it devastating. I remember wailing in the hallways before school after I’d been denied a grade change because of my absent show of work. I even remember yelling at a kid who I caught staring at my meltdown. Seeing my excruciating devastation, my friend came over to me and lent me his ear to rant to. He told me to calm down and that it was just one grade. Being the good Asian student that I am, I put up my defenses and reminded him that it was a C. A puncture to my heart, the end of my existence. A loogie on my ancestor’s graves. In reply, he told me that in five years I won’t be worried about this C on a middle school math quiz so why worry about it now? Look at that, not me mentioning the 5x5 rule in another blog.

Maybe Bobby McFerrin was inspired by the 5x5 rule. 

But connecting that to my current worry, instead of relying on the future to fix my uncertainties, I need to straight up accept them. In five years I won’t be worried about what college I got my piece of paper from. Relying on the next few months does not solve what is in front of you. And if you can’t fix it just accept it. A bad summer is a bad summer. It happened, it is over. Regret builds up– I still cringe about embarrassing things I’ve done or said back in middle school, like yelling at the kid who was watching me break down over a math grade–but you’re responsible for how high the pile gets. There should be no pile in general because it is all in the past. It’s gone, over, frozen. We can’t Ctrl + Z our mistakes in real life. 

It’s just college. The best years of your life. Said the liars— I mean college is only about four years. Only four years out of the (on average) 76 are supposed to be the best. I don’t know what is more pessimistic, that corny piece of advice or my criticism. 

Pessimism lives in limbo with me. I am still working on evicting him.