This is my final column for The Eagle, and as such, it's a little bittersweet and surreal to be writing. I'd first like to say thank you to everyone who has been reading the paper and writing letters, making comments online or simply saying, "Hey, I read your column. You are not as dumb as you sound in person."
You see, we columnists do not get paid, so our lifeblood is the feedback we get from readers and the special tickle we get inside every time we see our names in print. We wouldn't do this if it weren't for you, so please keep reading.
But alas, some of you will not keep reading, because you will have graduated, and this column is for you.
Seniors, as we look back on last year, when we stood around beer pong tables in April and asked '07 seniors if they were excited to graduate, and what they wanted to do after graduation, and won't it be so totally neat to have a real-life grown-up job, may we mentally punch our former selves in the face.
Not a day goes by without an adult asking me if I am excited to graduate. Generally I just stare blankly back at them until they stop smiling, mostly because I have forgotten how to interact with humans after having been buried in my room under an heap of books for the past month.
When adults ask me that, I feel as though they've forgotten what college means. College means someone else pays your rent. Your earliest commitment is an 11:20 a.m. World Politics class, where all you have to do is raise your hand twice a week to earn your 10 percent participation grade. Your greatest financial concerns are whether your internship stipend is enough to cover both your Starbucks habit and your weekend bar tab. I'm not really sure how to describe the emotion that comes with knowing all those things are coming swiftly to an end, but "excitement" really doesn't cut it.
Then there are the people who ask us what we want to do in life. Well, we want to not die starving on a park bench. Also, we would probably like to stop sharing a room at some point. Beyond that, it's kind of open.
Some of us are going to join the Peace Corps, so that when we run for Congress years from now, we can produce photos of us squatting beside a bubbling pot of goat head stew in a mud hut. Let them just try and peg us as an "elitist liberal."
Some of us are going to grad school, either because we have already decided what we want to do for the rest of our lives, or because we'd like to delay having to do so for two to four more years. Some of us are frantically applying for jobs while covering our ears and humming whenever someone says "economic downturn." Some of us are in a sheer state of panic. Some of us are moving into a cushy job at our father's law offices. Some of us hate you.
All of us are tired of people asking us if we're ready for the real world. We've gone to the financial advice sessions. We've brought countless resumes to the career center advisors, begging them to work some magic. We've bought a power suit. The rest is out of our hands.
But at the end of the day, we know that marathon runners run fastest when the finish line is in sight. We're fierce, and we know that if we've made it this far, we'll probably make it a little further too. If we can survive 8-hour internship days followed by three hours of class on four hours of sleep and a hangover, we can survive anything. The question is not whether we're ready for the real world, it's whether the real world is ready for us.
Olga Khazan is a senior in the School of Public Affairs and the social commentary columnist for The Eagle.
