I’m On The Edge…of The Real World

With the end of college looming in the foreseeable future, I feel a little bit like I’m balancing quite precariously on a ledge. In my mind it’s a little bit like those cartoons where the bad guy is chasing you, you see a clearing up ahead and think you’re about to get away for good until you realize you’ve come to the edge of a cliff overlooking a canyon below. Then, you scramble trying not to fall off as you realize you have completely run out of room to flee.

But what exactly is it that I’m running from? And what’s on the other side of the canyon anyway?

Throughout my three and a half years of college so far, I can recall countless times when I’ve been told to cherish my time here because college is “the best time of your life.” Don’t get me wrong, college is great, but it’s a little bit frightening to constantly be told that life will never get any better than this. Of course this isn’t to be taken 100 percent literally, but after hearing it so often it’s hard to resist believing it.

Then of course there’s the fear of what exactly I’ll do in life. I feel lucky that I actually have a good idea of what I want to do. Knowing that I want to pursue a career in journalism has given me structure, but the options still seem overwhelmingly endless. I’m a little bit afraid that I’ll make a wrong decision somewhere along the way — that I’ll move to a city or accept a job that I’ll later come to regret. It seems like every time I’ve devised a plan to get across the metaphorical cartoon canyon, I look down and remember that I’m scared of heights.

This past weekend, a friend who graduated last year came to visit and quelled some of my fears. Six months into her post-graduate life, she’s alive to tell the tale – and it’s not actually that bad, she said.  She assured me that life doesn’t end after college.  It just changes, sometimes in ways that you would never expect.

After graduating from USC with a degree in Business and Cinematic Arts, she changed her career before she started a career. After graduating in May, she moved back home to New Jersey, and took a three-month coding class that would give her a leg up on the tech jobs she was interested in, even if she didn’t know she had an interest in the tech industry while she was at USC.  Now, she’s in a position to land her dream job, and hosted a house-warming party at her new apartment in New York City just last week. Before she left L.A. on Monday night she received emails alerting her to two job interviews she received for the upcoming week.

She’s still standing on the edge too, still easing into life in New York City, getting used to her new neighborhood and working on landing a job. But she’s standing on the edge confidently, knowing that the fun part of life isn’t over, that there’s a lot more to come.

As I stand on the edge of the real world there are a lot of unknowns. But for the time being, I’m taking comfort in the fact that college seniors across the nation are standing alongside me, and I’m not the only one in this precarious position. Life beyond college might be different, but just like anything else in life, it is what you make of it. Society puts such an emphasis on college being your last sliver of freedom before signing your life away to corporate America, but maybe I’m just on the edge of something better.

Emily Goldberg is a senior majoring in print and digital journalism. Her blog column, Diaries of a Second-Semester Senior, runs every Thursday.