Strauss: Don’t be anxious about graduating

In about a week and a half, I’ll be sitting in Alumni Hall for the English department graduation ceremony. In about a week and a half, I’ll be sitting in Alumni Hall for the English department graduation ceremony. Afterward, I’ll go to lunch with my mother and my grandmother, where I’ll undoubtedly cry and drink two, maybe three, cosmos. My mind will race, more than usual, about life, goals and time — all the big questions. Mostly, however, I’ll think about where I was just one week prior — classrooms, my apartment full of amazing ladies and the studio theatre stage.

“How,” I’ll think, “is it possible that I’ve left the place where I had grown for four years from a teen to an adult?”

The end to anything is sad, even if it was a relationship you wanted to move on from or your last day in a branch office before transitioning to the main headquarters. You’re saying goodbye to a part of your life, and you’re also anticipating the future, curious and hopeful about the person you’ll become.

An ending is an opening — a messy rip. In writing, I can control my endings, allowing them to unfurl into a satisfying experience for the reader. Away from the keyboard, however, I’m not so suave. In fact, I have a particularly strong aversion to endings. During move-out weekend every year, I’d hide away in the Starbucks on Craig Street or, as a local, head home until Sunday evening when I could quietly move out — always, at my insistence, by myself.

So as graduation day fast approaches and I’ve yet to make plans for the upcoming year — apart from submitting graduate school applications — I realize I need to start mentally preparing for one of the biggest endings of my life so far. When I brought up this topic with my roommates, they didn’t want to talk about it — which made me realize it was the perfect subject for my last Pitt News column. It’s something every Class of 2012 student is going through.

My take on ending undergraduate studies is that we should treat it the way an author treats the last chapter of a novel — as an exciting opportunity. It’s exciting because we can choose the path for the next phase of our lives and create our own personal narrative.

So far, our lives have been structured. At high school graduation, we were all moving on to the University of Pittsburgh where we’d still have RAs watching over us, homework to do and a clear goal — to graduate! But after college, the consequences of our actions will be our own responsibility. It’s scary, yet exciting; we have more control over our lives.

Think back to the person you were at freshman orientation and who you are today. You’ve discovered a lot about yourself, your strengths and your interests. Use what you’ve learned to forge ahead and make realistic goals. Remember that graduating doesn’t mean you’re expected to know everything about the world or even what your next steps will be. As a Pathfinder, I get the “So what’s next for you?” question about five times a week. People expect you to be prepared to answer. But that doesn’t mean that you have to know right away. Your future life is now like the next book in an epic series, and the most dramatic adventures are yet to come.

Think back to how you survived your freshman year. Go back further to remember your first day at the big and scary high school — or even further, to the first day of first grade. We’ve made it to adulthood. We’ve become self-sufficient, independent people — just like when we spent our first week sans parents, having to feed ourselves and do our laundry or when we drove our beat-up purple Chrysler into the massive high school parking lot or when we let go of mom’s hand and stepped onto a big yellow school bus for the first time. With each chapter, the stakes are raised, but the successes are more rewarding. The university experience has made us well-groomed adults, and my wish for all my fellow graduates is that, in the words of author Neil Gaiman, “I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”

Contact Courtney at cas136@pitt.edu.