Just about every fourth-year columnist in the free world has already written — or will soon write — something about being a fourth-year. Something about graduating. Something about moving into “the real world,” which I think is actually a misnomer, but that’s a story for another day.
When I was shopping around for colleges, I knew I wanted to write for the school paper wherever I ended up. At the few colleges I visited — U.Va., Duke and William & Mary — I picked up a newspaper. I don’t remember the names of William & Mary’s paper, or even Duke’s — though I do remember one of the articles I read in Duke’s paper. It was written by the Duke equivalent of a Life columnist, and this girl — who was about to graduate — was writing about her plans to crash on her parents’ couch for the summer like it was the most normal thing in the world. As though that was what you were supposed to do after spending four years of your life and an inordinate amount of money on a more-than-decent education.
From the time I was little, my mother has always explained the sequence of growing up to me as such: “You go to college, you graduate, and you move away.” It was a doctrine.
I read the column and vowed that I would not be a parental couch-crasher. I was launching my college career! The world was full of possibilities! Most of my thoughts ended with exclamation points!
Come fourth year though, I underwent a mini-meltdown. I applied for MFA programs in creative writing. I’d always known that MFA program admissions were notoriously subjective — admissions are based largely on whether or not a school likes your writing sample — and the post-application suspense was incredibly difficult for me to handle.
Still, I stood firm in my vow of not couch-crashing. I searched for backup jobs in case all 10 of the MFA programs I’d applied to decided they weren’t interested in my writing. I applied to work as a reporter in far-away states. I sent my resume to technical writing companies. If none of these worked out, I had even decided to work on an organic farm for a year before reapplying to MFA programs.
When I got my acceptances to two programs, I was ecstatic. I had options! I knew I could go somewhere! I could stop emailing my resume to small-town papers in rural Indiana!
It felt like being on a plane right after landing. I tend to think in metaphors, and college has been a long transatlantic flight: interesting people, food that’s sometimes good but often not, some great views and a little turbulence. My application process was that nerve-wracking bump before the plane settles on the runway, and now everything is winding down.
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