As an alumnus, when I was asked to write a piece for The Cavalier Daily, my reaction was two-fold. Firstly, a sense of surprise that anyone in college might be interested in reading what I have to say. You and I, dear reader, are in different places in our lives. You have a social life, classes, activities sponsored by the University. I work from home, spending most of my day hunkered over a desk eating dolphin-safe tuna straight out of a can with my fingers and ignoring texts from people telling me to go outside. “Go outside, Chris,” they say. “You can’t keep living like this, your skin has become translucent.” But I merely hiss and retract my head into my body cavity. Then again, if I’m being honest, that was most of undergrad too. Perhaps we aren’t so different.
The second part of my reaction came from a sudden feeling of unexpected usefulness. Perhaps I can help you all out in the coming year. Because while you first-, second-, and third-years can read this and chuckle smugly, you fourth-years have a foot in the grave, don’t you? Yeah, that’s right, you’re going to be done soon! You have to make decisions about your life! No, don’t you dare look away from the page! Feel the panic swelling up in your throat and embrace it. Admit it to yourself: you’re leaving Charlottesville. Because if you stick around, you’re going to be “the person” who graduated but stayed in Charlottesville for reasons unclear. When people see you they will smile and greet you, but when you walk away they will shake their heads and click their tongues and make unkind remarks about you to each other, such as “It’s always so depressing to see X!” and “I always saw X in New York, but I guess he just didn’t have it in him!” Of course, if people say things like this perhaps a more pressing problem is that your parents chose to name you “X” and you have no clearly defined gender, but then again if that’s the case you probably would fit in pretty well in New York after all.
As usual, I digress. Here are some thoughts from me to you about what you may perhaps be facing when you leave the safe, warm, bosom of our dear University where everything is always okay all the time and nobody is ever troubled by matters of race or sexual violence.
First you’ll have to decide where you want to live. This depends on what you want to do career-wise. For example, if you do computer science or engineering you’ll gravitate toward California or Seattle. If you’re an artistic type, New York or Chicago might be more your speed. If you’re an English major, I understand your parents’ house is lovely this time of year.
Where you live depends in some small part upon what job you get. Ha ha! Did you see what I wrote there? “What job you get!” Like you’re just going to get a job! I must now take a moment to clutch my sides and wipe tears of mirth from my eyes.
Anyway, the big things always work themselves out. Don’t spend too much time hung up on them. Eventually you’ll live somewhere and do something and someone will give you money. Those immediate concerns aside, here are three things I have learned a year-and-change after graduation:
1. Wherever you go, your friends are going to be much further away than they are now, even if they are in the same city. U.Va. is such a lovely little insular community where everyone is right next door to each other. Imagine that you live in Lambeth and everybody you are interested in spending time with lives on JPA or even further. That’s what it’s like out here, folks. It’s cold, it’s dark and you are alone in an apartment complex surrounded by wolves, so get used to walking a lot and using public transit. Maybe sink some money into a nice wolf-beating cane.
2. You will probably end up spending time with people who are a different age than you. Assuming you get a job (hee hee!) you will come into regular contact with people as old as 40, perhaps even 50! Do not panic. Treat them as you would a kind drunken uncle and all will be well.
3. Don’t try to date who you’re dating now long distance. You’re gonna have to just trust me on this. There is nothing funny to say about this, except perhaps: to a certain person who may read this piece, and you know who you are, I hope you get lupus. That would be pretty funny.
Chris Bauer is a former Humor writer.
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