If you're reading this, you've probably either asked or been asked this question all day: "How does it feel to be done?" It's harmless — filler, almost. Everybody involved knows that you are too shell-shocked and petrified to really be able to analyze your emotions, and probably too hung-over to articulate them anyway. It's just your average stumped-for-conversation adult's go-to query for a brand-spanking-new college graduate.
We get it. It's not like we come up with new and exciting questions to ask Grandy every Passover — this is just the way of familial celebrations. This question, however, grates against our eardrums, cruelly mocking our lack of introspectiveness, foresight and in my case, a plan.
Why? Because it positively begs for an answer. As I write this, I've been "done" for almost two weeks, and by the time you read it, I'll be at a round three. How do I feel? Hell if I know. I've been vacillating between being giddy, in denial and inconsolable, with a side of debauchery and a lot of back episodes of "Modern Family." I'm like the "before" girl in Midol commercials, but this emotional disturbance has nothing to do with hormones, and it's not just me.
I keep catching my roommates staring longingly at household items, looking at the kitchen tablecloth or that crappy stapler that floats around our house like they are the Jacks to their Roses. Several of my friends put off their last papers for so long as to elicit angry emails from professors, but those emails were a small price to pay for staving off the impending disintegration of our reality.
The other day, we wondered if we would cry at graduation. Answers ranged from "definitely," to "probably," to "could you please not use the ‘g' word?" Seeing as I cried during "Free Willy 3," (1997) I figured I would. After all, graduations are tearjerkers by nature. Ours was designed to make us, and our parents, feel overwhelmed with accomplishment, nostalgia, and pride; add those to the loss and uncertainty we are already feeling and it was bound to have the whole quad in tears, but stop sniffling. This may sound strange coming from someone who cried her way through fifth, eighth and 12th grade graduations, but I mean it. This may be the end of something big, but it's also just an ending. The truth is, we start and finish things all the time. Sure, this one has a huge ceremony attached to it, but at least it's not called "matriculation."
Think back to the end of high school: Some of us were ready to go, and some of us had to be dragged away, but we all had that lurking feeling that something (maybe something great) was lost forever. Now look at us. Could I pay any of you to go back to high school? I didn't think so.
Obviously, college is infinitely more awesome than high school, and some of our tears are mourning the loss of things like weeknight drinking and 24-hour pajama acceptableness. Go ahead and cry for those, because some of us may never see them again, but then let's calm down and see the big picture.
Like I said, starts and finishes are all around. Today, we finish college. A few weeks ago, we finished classes. Tonight, we finish that bottle of champagne we've been saving, and next week, maybe I finish the first novel I've read for pleasure in months. But we are also starting. We'll be starting jobs, travels, friendships, leases, soul-searches.
We're starting the next phase of our lives, and even though it may not have an orientation or a meal plan, I think it's safe to say that it's still going to be fabulous. So live it up, because life doesn't end at Commencement — in fact, as every bad graduation speaker will tell you, "to commence" actually means "to start." So stop crying, stop talking about your feelings and start celebrating — immediately. Seriously, hurry up. I hear the fun stops at 28.
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Jessie Borkan graduates today with a degree in psychology. She can be reached at Jessie.Borkan@tufts.edu.
