I open my eyes as the alarm blares in the background, I blink, I squint at the sun accosting my sleepy and unprepared face, and burrow deeper into the blankets, hiding my head under a pillow. The alarm continues to blare and I hiss in annoyance, rising slowly. As I lash out my arm to shut the phone up, I realize that I do not have a hand anymore…I now have a paw. Fear strikes my heart, I fall out of my bed and I screech, unable to speak, panicked and confused. I attempt to stand up and realize I can only walk on all fours. I awkwardly bump into furniture as I race for the mirror. “This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening!!” I reach the full-length mirror of the living room, study my reflection, and begin to yowl. I have become a fucking cat.
The story above reflects (strangely, but in my opinion, accurately) my feelings on the postgraduate experience, otherwise known to many as an existential crisis of epic proportions, that tears apart the self-esteem, hopes and dreams of every former student who thought graduating from a top 20 university with a fancy piece of paper immediately meant they were entitled to that light at the end of the tunnel called employment. Stability. 401(k)s. A decent apartment and food other than ramen. Is that really too much to ask?
The horror of returning to one’s home after a four-year stint in college is difficult to describe. I liken it to being constipated in traffic whilst getting honked at by every person around you. It can be infuriating, uncomfortable, frustrating, exhausting, and can lead you to feel all kinds of stuck and desperate, but more than anything, alone in your “suffering.” Suddenly, you can’t go out to bars or clubs anymore because your parents are anti-alcohol. You’re given a curfew, a bedtime, and all kinds of restrictive rules that most 14-year-olds are subjected to. Even paying for your own bills, gas and food doesn’t make them lighten up. So what do you do? Bitch to your friends, make half-hearted attempts at looking up jobs online because you are overqualified, or worse, underqualified for every job on the market and it only continues to depress you and make you wallow in your own mediocrity, you sneak beers home and hide them under your bed to drink in secrecy and find solace in binge watching Justice League on Netflix, remembering a time when things like paychecks did not exist for you.
You realize that you have few friends at home because you hate most of the people you went to high school with, and this only makes you miss your university friends with a fury you’ve never felt before. At the same time, you try to hold back telling them how afraid you are that nothing will come of your life and that you’ll end up broke and unsuccessful. “You’ll be fine,” they say. “It’ll be alright!” And these are the right things to say, you say them to your worried friends too, but it doesn’t make the panic and the insecurity disappear. You want to socialize, but not with the people immediately around you. You’d rather sit at home alone half-naked eating pizza with a hard cider and watching TV than have to dress up and meet strangers you probably won’t like. But you try anyway, for the sake of having a life and maybe making a new friend.
You were very social in college, like a happy-go-lucky dog who loved everyone, went everywhere and felt that all was well with the world. You experimented, you made friends with new people and smiled often. Things were comfortable, things were fun. Now, you have become a semi-reclusive and occasionally moody cat that doesn’t want to deal with people’s shit. You stay inside when you aren’t out wandering by yourself, you hide and live the solo life. You might get a temporary job you are grossly overqualified for just to make money while something better turns up. It’s okay most days, but you are reminded that people are the worst sometimes. The absolute pits. You sit there, getting yelled at by random people for things you aren’t responsible for and smile, because you need the money and assaulting someone at a lawyer’s office is not the best option. You secretly curse them, mentally punch them in the face, and decide that you should have majored in business. Maybe then you’d be making an obscene amount of money like that moron from college who stumbled around drunk 4 out of the 7 days of the week. You sigh, check Facebook, make it through another week, You contemplate life. Go home. Repeat.
Over time, you realize that blaming everything and everyone around you is really immature and counterproductive, but you still do it every now and then because bitching about your life is like greeting an old friend. A better opportunity arises, you pounce and take it with a sigh of relief. Then you wonder if it was truly the right decision. Too late! And you really don’t care. You are just desperate to get out. As you excitedly wait for that next part of your life to begin, you continue to feel some of those negative things, but then realize you have learned something…
You have become a little more humble. You have more respect for the people you work with and stop bitterly feeling like you deserve better all the time. You can do better than where you are of course, but you chose that job and that decision is on you, not them. You are blessed to even be employed, unlike the friendly homeless man that sleeps outside of your office. You realize that you have so much potential and still have an entire life ahead of you, and are suddenly embarrassed at having had such a pity party when people around you almost four times your age are slaving away every day to make ends meet. When your parents have had to sacrifice every bit of themselves for you and your future and never had the opportunities you were given. No, you haven’t become Mother Teresa overnight, LOL. You are still way too egotistical and young for that. But you become a more self-aware and less shitty person, with a genuine and deeper understanding of yourself and others around you. And honestly, that’s about all you can handle sometimes. So come at me, life. This tenacious cat is on the hunt, and I’m going to make you my bitch.
Carolina “Caro” Ramirez of New Jersey graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2015 with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science.
Lehrmda 