Oh the Places we will go

It's been eight days since I last attended to anything academic at all.
Graduation doesn't count. Being herded into a mass of 20,000 squirming pointy black cardboard hats to sit on bleachers for two hours didn't really result in any firing of neurons, so apart from my thesis defense I've been working on accustoming myself to...things?

I'm not really sure. I walked into work yesterday and as we humans are prone to do, I was asked how it was going. Before I could reply with the obligatory "Fine." (Because no one actually wants to hear about your deepest fears and desires) my boss chimed in with a "She's getting used to how to not be a student."

If that's what you'd call the crippling sense of overwhelming self doubt a formative stage of accustoming to real life... then yeah. I'm working on that.

Although, this summer should be pretty sweet. I'm working full time at an alright job, I've got enough money to keep my fridge semi-stocked, I can take a Wednesday morning off to blog and drink sangria on the porch with my cat curled up in my lap. Today is Wednesday, right? I lose track...
 So yep, without all of those aspirations and goals to strive for, the mental stimulation of overcoming challenges, the arduous journey to self discovery, this is looking like it might shape up to be an alright summer.

 And this is usually the moment where someone decides to tell me that mine being melodramatic is cliche. 20,000 other graduates in Ann Arbor alone are going through the same feelings I am. And they're right.

Our commencement speaker was the CEO of Twitter. Though not a Tweeter (Twitter-er? Getwotter?) it was nice to find out that he had a checkered past. Before hauling off and inventing some social media site filled with tiny #birds, he adventured out to try his hand at stand-up comedy. (Oh, so Obama spoke during your commencement speech? Big deal! Our speaker sort of kind of knows Steve Carell. Yeah, how do you like them apples!?) He told us to go out and do two things: be courageous and live in the moment.

My mom had similar advice. She gave me a hug before leaving and said, "Now go make something of yourself"

Without a doubt, I could think of nothing but this:

Leave it to Sunny to perfectly iterate what every single one of those 20,000 previous pointy black cardboard hats is thinking at this moment as we listen to the birds chirp on this gloriously sunny day and slip deeper into pool of our own anxiety.

I am currently shimmying down a job canon to fire off a few applications into job land. I hope they land in fertile fields to produce many a jobbie tree...