It has been three months since I finished school
and just over one month since I formally graduated. I
have a steady part-time job that will likely becme a full-time job in
the fall. I have love and if
the full-time job works out, I will be able to afford an apartment
downtown. Independence and freedom, ho!
My brain, however, is not
happy unless it is dwelling on something. As such, I have gleefully
reached the introspective analysis of the past four years.
I
was 17 years old when I started university and I went through the
program at the prescribed pace, without taking any extra time to slow
things down. Now that it is over, I feel as though I am better able to
reflect on the overall experience and how it's prepared me for "real
life." First of all, I now see serious flaws in the way I went about
things; unlike many other students who enroll in a faculty, choose a
smorgasboard of courses and decide on a major later on in their
academic career, I went to a very specialized
institution for a very specialized subject. As the
university's president said on more than a few occasions, you come to
this place because you thought about your future and said "I know what
I want to be."
How are you supposed to know what you want to
do with your life when you're 21 years
old and have a degree hanging on the wall opposite your bed, much less
when you're 17 and first applying to university? When I was in school I
felt an immense pride in the notion that I would have a set of letters
after my name at 21. Now that I'm here, I wish I'd taken it slower. Now
that it's over, there are a lot of things I think I would have done
differently had I been given the chance to do it all over again. While
some of these are specific to my situation, I'm sure they're universal
enough to be shared:
I wish I'd thought outside the box more;
specifically, I wish I'd taken more broadcast classes and possibly
even majored in it. While the field didn't appeal to me at all a first,
working in an online newsroom that's closely linked
to a major television news network has led me to appreciate it more. I
also discovered how much I like to package and organize information
into things like podcasts, which are broadcasts for new media.
I
wish I'd thought about a more "traditional" undergraduate program, one
that was more flexible in terms of course offerings. I first came to
think about this when I ran into a friend who went to another
university and she started telling me about her Old English and Old
Gaelic courses. What was I taking? A history course more or less the
same as the history course I'd taken in the twelfth grade. (At the same
time, I met the love of my life in a Canadian politics class that also
covered much of the same territory as grade 10 civics, so perhaps I
ought to shut up.)
I wish I'd been able to get past the school's
insistence on blending "traditional" and "non-traditional" academic
patterns. Mixed in with my reporting and broadcasting and freelancing
courses were English courses consisting of a novel every week and
history courses demanding full-length essays. Not to say that's
unreasonable, of course, but the mix did not allow for an effective
rhythm to be established and the majority of the people with whom I
associated felt an allegiance to either one type of courses (usually
the journalism courses) or the other.
I wish I'd been more
social. Most of the friendships I forged came out of the campus paper at which I spent most of my time. That's not a
complaint -- I love these people and consider them my second family --
but I felt alarmingly detached from so many of the people I've been
around day in and day out when the time came for us to graduate. They
all crossed the stage one by one and I felt sad to think that I don't
really know any of them.
I wish I'd put more effort into my
courses. While I graduated with a B average, I could have done much
better and could well be heading to graduate school this fall (thus
not having to spazz out about what's going on with my life at 21)
rather than considering working for a while and then heading back to
school or pursuing another undergraduate degree on a part-time basis. I
used to think it was weird that so many of the people I went to high
school with chose to take extra courses or work for a year before
commencing undergraduate studies and that even though we finished high
school together I'd finish my degree before they did. Now, people I
finished university with will have their masters' degrees before I do.
I wish I hadn't been so quick to declare that I hated journalism. As it turns out, I do not hate journalism. I merely hate reporting. I love to edit, to disseminate information, to discuss, to write. I hate doing interviews. I hate bothering strangers. I hate invading people's privacy. I love knowing what is happening as it happens. Journalism does not have to involve the reporting I loathe so much. The journalists I work with make their living from condensing and reorganizing wire copy so as to make it readable.
I wish I knew what I was doing.
After
much panic, I've come to realize that panic is counter-productive. For
more than four years I've believed that once I had set out on a given path, I was supposed to stay that course and not
ever look back. Bullocks. There are dozens of ways my life could go
from here and I'm not even sure which one I like the best. There's a
politics and public administration graduate degree I'm interested
in. There are countless other undergraduate degrees I could pursue once
I've let some time pass and earned some money. Or I could see how this
work thing goes and where it takes me.
I want to see Europe. I
want to get married. Kids are not out of the question, though I'm not
counting on it. Maybe it's all the hype surrounding all the dang Harry
Potter, but that thing Dumbledore told Harry in the
first installment just keeps ringing in my ears: "It does not do well
to dwell on our dreams and forget to live." Life is about more than work and school and
money, more than how many letters one can write after one's name, more
than business cards.
I'm going to Montreal next weekend. I
was born in Montreal; I've been back there several times since moving
to Ontario. This is the first time I'm going back alone, however, and
I could not be more excited.
Next to my degree is a framed black
and white photo of my love and I, taken at the paper's's
fortieth anniversary party. I am laughing; he is smiling at me. It was
taken by one of my friends, a former photo editor, at some point during
the evening. I don't remember when. I do remember seeing it for the
first time and being taken aback at just how well it conveyed how happy
I am when I'm with him. I'm in love and I could not be happier.
I don't know what I'm doing. I could not be more confused.
It's
awesome.