OyChicago blog

Every so often, I go on a Thought Catalog reading binge to confirm everything I feel about post-grad/early 20s life. After skimming about 20 entries while trying to fall asleep the other night, I found a great entry, one that I was disappointed that I didn’t think of first. It was entitled "5 Things I Assumed I'd Have A Year After Graduating College."

Two weekends ago was the one year anniversary of my college graduation. What is exceedingly weird to me is that it doesn’t even feel like it’s been three months let alone a whole year since I graduated and left Washington DC for a new chapter of my life in Chicago. I am not sure if I should feel good about this or if it should lead me to have some sort of “what am I doing with my life?!?!” freak out, but the truth of the matter is that the past year has been surreal. Not surreal in the sense that life has been so amazing that I can’t believe it is happening, but more so that it doesn’t feel like much has happened. In reality, the events of the past year have been fairly momentous: I moved twice, started a new job, and had some memorable times in between. Nevertheless, as the author of this great piece explained, there are so many things that I thought would be the case right now. However, many of these things are so far from a reality.

1. The feeling of being older: I don’t even believe myself when I tell people I’m 23. When did I stop being 21? I don’t think it is fair and/or believable. Even with the responsibility of a daily job, the ability to do so many things on my own, and the privilege of living downtown, I can still barely believe that I am in this stage of my life.

2. All my friends from different area codes, living in the same area code: I will be the first one to say that this was a naïve hope. Of course, I always knew that my best friends from school would stay out east for the most part and just because I wanted to return to Chicago, this didn’t mean that everyone else felt the same way. Nevertheless, I had the slightest bit of hope that most of the people I liked from all the various experiences I have had up until graduation would somehow end up in the same city and it would be wonderful. All I can say is at least I have an excuse to travel now!

3. More opportunities to write: When I was nine years old, my Nana read something I wrote and told me I should be a journalist. Needless to say, I ended up writing for every school newspaper until I went to college, majored in journalism, and the rest is history. Except for the fact that I am not writing nearly as much as I imagined I would be. I would trade a features assignment for an excel spreadsheet any day.

4. Knowing what I am doing with my life: Honestly, I can muster up an answer as good as the next person during job interviews or when a distant relative begins to pester me about my life goals, but truthfully, I really have no idea what I want to do with my life. When it comes down to it, I love to write, I like to organize things, and I spend way too much time brainstorming feasible ways to return to Israel. The rest of my interests and/or goals fall into a gray area that lacks clarity and is filled with confusion.

5. The ability to be decisive: I am the least decisive person ever. It took me hours alone to even think of what my fifth assumption for this blog post should be. Though it’s great to be easygoing about things, the ability to actually make decisions in a reasonable amount of time seems like a pretty integral part of being a functioning adult. There’s always next year…