Priorities

My Facebook feed contained a goodly amount of celebrating this past weekend. Sunday was Pitt’s commencement ceremony, which means that it’s been over a year since I graduated, officially. The thought makes me queasy, so I usually dive right back into one of the books in my massive pile of library acquisitions. Drowning out the thoughts doesn’t help, because they always seem to come back. Even now, the mention makes me want to shove my laptop away and start reading again.

Why do I have this gut reaction? It doesn’t make sense. Is it because other people’s graduation successes remind me of how little I’ve accomplished since the same thing happened to me? The ones with full time jobs are particularly resent-able. There’s a distinct feeling of “why don’t I have that? I’m qualified!” It never fails to make me feel bad about my three (3) part-time gigs, which don’t seem to occupy enough of my hours to make me feel employed at all.

It’s impossible to deny that there’s a stigma surrounding 20-something college grads these days. If you’ve had tons of internships and volunteer experience, you’re much more appealing to employers. If you’re not living on your own with a full-time job after graduation, then you were probably a liberal arts major (kidding…sort of). It’s true, the economy’s bad, but it’s bouncing back, and it’s no reason to keep an able-bodied, Bachelor’s-wielding candidate from exploring every avenue of employment possibility in every remotely-related field. Assertiveness is key, here.

One hundred percent of the time, if a new acquaintance asks where I work, and I explain, they follow up with either: “oh, so you’re still in school?” or “what’s your major?” I still haven’t figured out what they expect to hear, but there’s always a change in their expression when I say it was Writing, and that I’ve already graduated. And every single time, the response is “oh, so you wanna teach?”

I wish I was in a position to give advice to people, but I’m an awful teacher. Most of the time, I can’t force what I’m saying to make any sense unless I write it down first. I cannot improvise anything, from music to pick-up lines. When I do speak in front of groups, I use far too many words.(It’s usually the case when I write, too.) So I can tell people, with some degree of confidence, that I don’t want to teach.

The real problem is that I’m not entirely sure what I do want to do. I don’t enjoy journalistic writing. I’m not outgoing enough for teaching. The one thing I have been doing consistently in the last year is writing for my own enjoyment. I majored in Fiction Writing, and I still like doing it! I might be onto something!

As for my lifelong career choice, I’m not really there yet. I know what I enjoy doing, but I’m still exploring. As long as I have an opportunity to think about how I might fit into the scheme of things, I’ll take it.

And if that means my priorities are backwards, that’s fine by me.