Spring break is approximately half over and I have much still to do (as my professors decided to make midterms the week we come back- both a blessing and a curse).  And as I’ve sat alone in Brottier Hall while my friends have traveled to distant corners of the Earth, I have learned some very important lessons.

First and foremost, I fancy being alone, but I don’t like being lonely. It is hard to be an introvert in an extroverted group of friends, in an extroverted career path.  I will literally make my living communicating with people and that’s a difficult thing to reconcile myself to because, in a way, I chose English because I didn’t have to interact with people.  Words have always been my “thing,” as it were; people, not so much.  And while I have evolved immensely in that respect over the last two years, sitting in this room alone for an extended period of time is just not simply something I’m in to.  This raises a whole other level of concern, because if I am so willing to move away from Pittsburgh to a city where I don’t know anyone, how, exactly am I going to avoid the very situation I find myself in?

The truth is, I have a countdown until Graduation in my planner and I’m sort of hoping that it never runs down to zero.  In the last 4 days, I have realized how utterly unprepared I am to be an adult.  I don’t have anything figured out, not even a little bit– I don’t have a job, though I’ve spent countless hours changing cover letters and sending out resumes to people who don’t even acknowledge that they’ve received your application.  And if I do get a job in the near future and it’s not in Pittsburgh, that just expands the number of things that I have to do that I don’t think I’m ready for.  The real, hard truth of the matter is that there’s a Disney Princess on the back of my computer, I have had a pudding cup every day this week, my favorite television show is about a high school glee club, and I’ve spilled something in the kitchen every time I have attempted to make dinner.

I think, of course, that adulthood is all relative and a social construction of things that you’re supposed to do and think and feel, but most of it’s just a bunch of crap.  I read somewhere once that adulthood doesn’t mean you feel like you know what you’re doing, but that the number of things that you’re experiencing for the first time just keeps decreasing.  While I in no way consider myself an “ADULT,” I can’t help noticing all the firsts that are over, and all the ones that are threatening to crash down around me in the next several months.

For 22 years, I couldn’t wait to get going because this town felt so small and I felt so big.  And now that it’s time to leave, I’m the one who feels small and the world feels so, so big.  I am grateful for opportunity and for change; I would be a fool to think that the end of college is the end of my story.  But all I’ve done is work and do homework this week while all my friends have been on adventures.  While it has given me a lot of time to reflect on the aspects of my life I honestly don’t like and know I have to change, it hasn’t been easy recognizing that I am being forced to grow up.

I suppose this should act as a sort of moment of revelation wherein I seize every moment that Duquesne has left for me- and I will, I really will.  But for right now, while everyone is gone and I’m sitting in my living room thinking about going to bed at 9:30, I’m just wishing for a little bit more time.

“Couldn’t wait to get going, but wasn’t quite ready to leave.”