It has been a little over a week since I graduated college. Even saying that sentence still seems strange to me. The process wasn’t that different than it is any year I leave school: I packed up my stuff, I drove home, I spent a week trying to figure out where I was going to put all of my stuff. The difference, I suppose, is what comes next.
But before I can move on, I always like to take the time to reflect on what has just happened. I graduated from Indiana University in three years. I graduated with degrees in Jewish Studies and Telecommunications. I graduated with a solid GPA, a beefed up resume, and a job.
College for me, though, was always more of a learning experience outside of the classroom than it ever was inside. In fact, one of the hardest things I learned was how to balance the work of college with the application of it in the real world. There were students who spent all of their time on their schoolwork. There were others who didn’t do any schoolwork. Finding a balance between these two poles was something that was a daily challenge.
Balance is, really, the basis of the entire college experience. Each student needs to find a balance for their time, a balance for their extra-curricular experiences, a balance for their consumption of food (and alcohol). The students that are most successful in school are not the ones with the highest GPAs, but are the ones who find the greatest balance for their day-to-day life.
Now, though, I consider my own pursuit of balance, and the role that it played in my desire to graduate a year early. One of my favorite quotes that I’ve ever heard comes from Mark Twain, who said “I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.” It was halfway through my sophomore year that I realized that my education was being stunted by the need to be in the classroom. I was learning a lot in my classes, but not as much as I was learning elsewhere. When I realized I was in a position to do something new, something different, I decided to take it.
As my college time was coming to an end, my roommate and I made an effort to do something different, something fun, something meaningful, every day. We didn’t want a single day to go by that we didn’t take advantage of all of the incredible things school had to offer. Some of the things we did were as simple as watching a sporting event with good friends. Others were going out and seeing parts of campus that we would miss the most.
In each and every case, though, I came away with the feeling that I was attempting to say goodbye to something that wasn’t really ending, but simply changing. Since October, when the idea that I was graduating first started setting in, I’ve been rolling around what I wanted to say. I’ve been planning the most epic blog post of all time. Yet, now that I’m sitting down to write it, I realize that this isn’t a singular experience. College has been, in a way, who I’ve been for the past three years. I’ve grown up so much in the way I act, the way I think, and the way I write. It isn’t a single, giant blog post that is going to summarize where I’ve come from over the past three years. It is three years worth of blogging. Three years of pieces maturing before the eyes of my readers. Anyone can see where I have come from by watching my weekly (well, ideally) writing.
This coming year will be an adventure. I have a job I’m excited about, future plans, and a great living situation. I’m going to go out and look for exciting and different things to fill my time. A one-day job shadowing here, a trip to someplace I’ve never been there. I’m going to make the most of this year that I’m taking for myself. Yet, as I learned in the last three years, every day has an incredible experience to share. You just have to be paying attention to it when it happens.
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