Well seniors, this is it: the point of no return. For those of us eligible to graduate — whether you’re a headstrong, dedicated junior or a boring, credit-conscious senior — something fundamental is changing.
Of course, this isn’t just starting now. Like divorce and puberty, this is a process that begins long before we see the telltale signs (e.g. a lack of sexual contact, emotional distance and rapid, undesirable hair growth).
You finally have your own Amazon account, you’ve gone from the fated, ancestral enemy with your siblings to close friends and your aunt no longer censors her sex jokes around you — and if you’re me, you’re learning the right way to tie your shoes and graduating beyond skateboard-brand Velcro wallets.
But most of those are just arbitrary markers of adulthood, and I’m never embracing any transition that tells me I should stop filling my spare time with Lego: Indiana Jones for PlayStation 2, Wii or PC.
What I’m talking about is what’s changing right now in a direct relation to our advancement through this convoluted and quixotic process of self-improvement and sacrifice we call higher education: our connection to home.
Up until now, the command has been “Come home. Spend time with us. Bring us back our Tupperware.” But the polarity is reversing; your parents’ magnetic field is shifting to push you away. (English major here, sorry — you might say electromagnetic metaphors are a little out of my field. I try to stay current, but I have to force it to make it quark sometimes. Well, it is watt it is).
Your family probably isn’t even aware of it yet, but it’s happening. Every visit home in the past was welcomed with much rejoicing. But pretty soon after graduation, even short visits might be tainted with a little shame if you’re not rapidly moving on to the next big thing.
You might’ve already noticed this slow shift in orientation over break. Every night after my first day back, my mom would make oblique references to “whenever we’ll see you next” and say goodnight like I’d be leaving before dawn to find passage on a freighter to Singapore.
And after just a week of being at home, my self-worth started to dry and curl into a shriveled, unrecognizable mollusk of an ordinarily healthy (albeit swollen) ego. That’s exaggerating a little bit, but it was a paralyzing and dazzlingly unproductive venture (dealing with the parents’ shock at finding me on the couch again every morning didn’t help).
