Dear (obstinate, naïve, recent college-graduate), 22-year-old self,
(Edit: the original date of this post was August 19, 2015. I would like to add that at 35, I am still, indeed, figuring my shit out)
You’re brazen, badass, and seemingly ready for “the real world.” Pulling B+’s in classes such as ‘Intro to Women’s Studies’ and ‘Brit Lit’ have prepared you intellectually. Your ability to allocate funds for nickel night each week throughout undergrad with your (parent’s) cash proves you can totally manage money. And you’re in an everlasting relationship because if you don’t meet “the one” in college, a single’s playground of sorts, it’s simply not in the cards. Arbitrary classes, adequate money skills and haphazard romance are all that you need to dominate life, right? Hard wrong. You’re on the brink of a million genuine, irreplaceable experiences that will thrust upon you the real lessons in life, ready or not. You’re about to fail at this, excel at that. Mess up this, learn from that, navigate this, flounder that. Take heed, and listen up.
Tell the truth. When you get your first speeding ticket due to a faulty, uneven spray tan (the police officer is not going to understand the necessity of a shower ASAP), don’t take the issue to court with the intent to lie. When you do, you’ll literally be speechless when your colorful story about speeding home to an ailing family member is truncated by the judge and the affidavit he’s holding detailing your defective spray tan. You’re still ordered to pay the ticket and the entire courtroom hears the awkward exchange and the reprimands of the judge. Tell the truth about the speeding and the spray tan. Knock on your neighbor’s door the first time you lightly tap (…) his Mercedes with your Sebring. Tell the guy you like him. Don’t fabricate your reason for quitting a job that’s wrong for you (I.E. Frozen Yogurt shop manager).
Speaking of tickets, you can’t just ignore parking tickets. The prospect of law enforcement “forgetting this time” to bill you isn’t pragmatic. The fees will proliferate until you owe approximately forty-seven times the initial cost to simply purchase a parking pass. Avoidance usually catches up with you.
Travel wherever and whenever you can. Live on other side of the world for four months when you don’t speak the language. Drive across county lines to try the infamous BBQ. Ride ATVs around the Greek islands. Borrow a backpack, buy a ticket, drive, take a sick day, fill up your gas tank, fly, quit your job, throw a dart at a map. Discover an acquaintance of a friend’s coworker who lives in Amsterdam and sleep on his couch. Even after traveling the world for 3 weeks upon coming home when you have to borrow money for an oil change, you have the most valuable things. You have legendary stories, memories, and life experience. You can say, “remember that guy from South America we met in line for Thai food in Iceland?” You can advise others not to stay in a place nicknamed the Murder Motel in Nashville. Years down the road you’re not going to wish you hadn’t spent the money. But if you don’t up and go, chances are you’ll regret it.
You don’t need to rush into a serious job. As a fledgling post-grad with zero clue what to do, don’t worry. (Insider tip: Nanny. You can dress in yoga pants every day and no matter the family, there always seems to be a never-ending supply of string cheese and peanut butter sandwiches). It’s more than acceptable to take a job outside the walls of your major. You’re 22. You’ll find your way.
Sometimes, less is better. Believe everyone when they insist you don’t need a seventh sangria at your friend’s pool party in the ‘burbs. You end up the last patron at that party, attempt to hitchhike and ultimately pay upwards of a hundred bucks for a cab ride back to the city. You never live it down because people don’t forget, especially when they screenshot your Snapchat in the police station. (Sorry, Mom).
(And sometimes, more is better. Consume more than just a tub of cool whip for dinner on New Years Eve. Trust me on that one).
Forgiveness is a real thing. So is being sorry. People do, in fact, make mistakes. It’s going to take a tremendously contentious night and some bruised friendships for you to realize this. But once you do, you never forget it.
You’re going to learn a lot about friendship post-college. Some of your friends are going to stay in their hometown and others will live in five countries. Some friendships are effortless and indelible and although you wind up living time zones apart you know what they had for breakfast last Tuesday and where they pregamed on Saturday. Some friendships aren’t meant to last, and that’s okay. Don’t force them. The bitterness will fade and you’ll be genuinely happy when you see their nuptials on social media. Accept each friendship for what it is.
Normalize yourself to the concept of casual dating. Although post-college you just exited two back-to-back relationships, don’t become a commitment-phobe. Casual drinks don’t necessarily equate to wedding bells and at 22 you’re not too old to be dating the wrong person. Soon you’ll be 26 and still struggling with this concept, unable to even commit to a full song on the radio because there might be a better song playing out there somewhere. Don’t become jaded, it’s not a good look.
Don’t rush things. Spend more than 18 minutes looking for a used car before you buy one. You’re missing a hubcap and you have to physically roll up your windows. (Why was Nissan not including power windows in 2012?!) Also, stop touching your laptop with wet hands. Water damage isn’t covered under warranty. You don’t need to change the song THAT badly, even if Bruno Mars is singing about making love like a gorilla.
Pay attention. To people’s names, to how you truly feel, and to where you parked your car. There are seven levels in that Atlantic City parking garage and they all look the same after two hours of desperate searching.
Believe people until they give you a reason not to. For example, allergies do, in fact, exist. Stop knocking people who claim to have them. You’re jinxing yourself and when you move to a new climate you develop debilitating allergies for three weeks straight, one day of misery for every time you rolled your eyes at someone complaining of itchy eyes when you were a nonbeliever. Nobody likes a skeptic. (However, when someone you’re dating lies about their age for four months, feel free to never trust them again).
Don’t do something stupid for the second time. You broke up with him for a myriad of valid reasons. And your belly button ring ripped out the first time you pierced it. Six months of space didn’t change anything, don’t try again with him. It’s 2AM at a music festival and you find yourself at a piercing shop, don’t re-pierce it, go home. They’re both going to hurt worse the second time around.
As cliche as it sounds, tell people you love them and don’t sweat the small stuff. One Friday in February you’re on the phone with your dad complaining about your lack of funds to fix your obnoxious car muffler. You don’t bother to ask why your brother is home sick from school and hang up the phone in self-pity wondering why these dreadful things seem to happen to you. The following Tuesday you’re at a funeral delivering your only sibling’s eulogy desperately wishing your tears were again caused by something trivial. There will not be a “next year” to accompany your brother to the Christmas party he wants to go to this year. Never assume you have tomorrow. Go. Now. Do. Experience.
Join the kickball team even though halfway through your second season you don’t always know when to run and when to stay. Take the class you’re vastly interested in yet vastly apprehensive about. Go to the concert in another state when you have no idea where you’re going to sleep. You’ll make connections on that team, learn how to write feature stories in that class, and you will sleep somewhere that night. Do it all. No good story starts with, “I was sitting on the couch one night.”
If you don’t like what you’re doing, stop. When the prospect of student teaching is simultaneously uninteresting and terrifying, there’s no shame in dropping out of your graduate program and embarking on a month-long cross-country road trip. It ultimately leads you to your professional and geographical fit. (Side note: you’re not “too old to move” to a new region.) Go back to the drawing board. Scribble obscenities on that board and maim some pencils while you have a quarter life crisis. You’ll figure it out, and everyone worth having in your life will support your decisions, no matter how unorthodox they may be.
Capture all of it, moments are transitory. Develop pictures. You need to frame the picture of the time your family all traveled for your college graduation. You also need to frame the photo that was snapped nanoseconds after your friends took a 90 proof tequila shot. Write it down, even a sentence a day. A few years later, it’s comical to re-read your apprehension over a new job that turned out to be fine. Even more laughable is the crush you thought would be longstanding that turned out to be shorter than a 48-hour flu.
You’ll realize that some people are going to have life figured out at 22 and you’ll meet others who don’t have it figured out at 44. At 26.5 you’ve yet to land the dream job or climb the financial ladder or Instagram your left hand captioned with the ring emoji. You’ve been through some shit, and there’s undoubtedly more up ahead. Three and a half days a week you feel like you should become a life coach and three and a half days a week you believe that you’re in dire need of one. Just keep on trucking and experiencing and wholeheartedly believing in one of your favorite quotes; “The best is yet to come.”
With love and oh-so-much anticipation of the story-fueled advice come four years from now,
Your (still relatively obstinate, not-as-naïve, figuring-her-shit-out), 26-year-old self