All my life I’ve been used to following a set path. I assumed that everything was a linear progression: from point A to B to C. Currently, point A was graduation, point B was Homecoming and in the middle would be a steady dream job. I assumed that my reunion with Wesleyan alumni would involve me sitting at a wooden round table sipping sake and using sesquipedalian words to describe our lives. I envisioned myself talking about my days spent writing at a major magazine, my nights hosting a stand-up comedy show, and my weekends attending $100 cultural events. The reality is that I am living off ludicrously low earnings, my comedy career is floundering, and the most cultural event I attended was the Labor Day sale at Target—where I learned about a two-for-one special on corduroy jackets.
Because my budding career wasn’t exactly budding, I didn’t want to return. I completely dreaded unemployment, homelessness, student loans—these concerns all paled in comparison. The visit mutated into a monstrous affair. It grew fangs, crimson eyes, leather wings. How was I going to explain my lack of success in the real world? What was I going to say I was doing? I reached campus on a Friday night, saw the red and black banner and felt an onrush of hives.
I kept that Friday night very low-key, all the while working on a faux-impressive bio. As soon as Saturday morning rolled around, I hit the ground networking. And not networking with a beer at the football game. I went and attended as many free Wesleyan seminars as possible. I used to think they were just a way to distract the parents while the students drank and complained, but the talks were pretty interesting. I listened to Wesleyan alumni ten to twenty years out of college discussing their experiences. Okay these people didn’t finalize their plans for years, so I shouldn’t be too concerned about my own life. I was calmer in theory but not in practice. I still didn’t have a synopsis of my post-graduation experience to tell my friends and countrymen and I wanted to stall seeing them some more. So as soon as the networking events concluded, I took a trip down memory lane.
I visited my first-year dorm that afternoon. I lived on the bottom floor of Hewitt 10, which was an all-boys floor at the time. I entered the building and it felt like I had never even lived here. First off, they replaced the carpeting and banished that horrible meat-and-vomit odor. The floors were now co-ed; I discovered a woman living in my old room. The biggest change was the replacement of the window screens. See, there used to be thin vertical blinds in front of the windows, which does less than nothing in maintaining privacy. Every time I had to change, I felt like I was in a quarter peep-show booth. I must have talked this poor sophomore’s ear off for half an hour about living here before it dawned on me that I am far too obsessed with holding on to this ephemeral past. If the room had changed and moved on, I had to as well. Mercifully I let her go and prepared for the inevitable run-ins.
Saturday night, I plucked up some Dutch courage and faced my demons head-on. Naturally the alumni were out in full force. It took me all of five minutes to spot an alum-mob, ambling about and brandishing forties. We exchanged pleasantries, talked about where we were living. “So where are you working?”
This was the question I most feared. I bet all these people had landed their dream jobs and condos. In my head I spun a tale about a rich crusty patron throwing millions of dollars my way so I could purchase a penthouse with a sundeck. But that sounded far too much like a bad NBC sitcom; plus I didn’t feel like lying. I chanced it and told the truth. If I sounded like a failure, so be it.
“I’m having a wonderful time,” I started with a smile. “Currently, I’m being underpaid to type random information into a computer and print badges for rude lawyers and accountants. Oh and would you believe that before this job I got fired from a place because I didn’t have enough filing experience? Apparently, even though I’m an English major, I guess I don’t know the alphabet.”
“That’s nothing. I can’t even get a job at Urban Outfitters. I should have taken a class in symmetry because they hated the way I folded jeans.”
Thank goodness for humor. Hell, thank goodness for commiseration. Of all the alums I talked to, very few—if any—actually had their lives figured out. With the exception of the grad school students, many alums were as adrift as I was. The jobs varied from baristas to manicurists to cashiers at the Container Store. None of us were failures; we were all just struggling to iron out our lives.
If I have any useful wisdom to impart to you undergraduates, it’s that life is rarely a straight line. Don’t think of graduation as one endpoint and your dream career as another. Leaving Wesleyan is like throwing a rock into a pond. True, there is a starting point, but from there your opportunities ripple outwards, in all directions. Life isn’t a narrow trek; it is a large looming expanse. The possibilities are near infinite and you can travel further than the endpoints you’ve staked out.
I left Sunday not with a bang, but with muted goodbyes. There were no flying caps, no large tent parties, no sobbing students. On my way out of Middletown, I saw a neon orange sign which read “Detour Ahead.” The sight couldn’t have been more emblematic.
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