life-after-graduation « WordPress.com Tag Feed

Growing Up

Ellen — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 01:33:20 +0000

I have never felt so old as watching the college kids move in this weekend. Listening to them make plans on the bus and watching the boxes disappear into buildings has made me realize; somewhere between graduation and now, three months later, I grew up. Of course, I was considered "grown up" well before then, but I had never before labeled myself "adult." Until now.

I know how much debt I'm getting into. Though I know it was a mistake, I was not fully aware of the loans I had taken out in order to help pay for college. For the most part, I let my parents deal with the finances. Call me spoiled if you want, but that's the way it was. I'm paying my own way now, and I am acutely aware of how much I'll be paying off after graduation.

This means I'm getting thrifty. I need to pick up some new work clothes for the fall since I'm woefully short on business attire and I'll be doing so at the thrift store down the road. I don't go out to eat. I try to minimize my expenses as much as possible. Laundry gets washed in the tub. Plastic bags are washed and reused.

What makes me feel so much older than the college kids though, is that 10:30 is bedtime now, not the time to go out. It seems the older I get, the earlier I go to sleep. Freshman year it was 2:00 at the earliest, sometimes much later. By senior year, I was asleep at 12, sometimes earlier. After running after preschoolers this summer, being asleep by 10:30 was late.

While waiting on the bus with the girls behind me making plans for later that night, I knew it was time to be the adult. Get out of t-shirts and jeans, learn to talk on the phone, pay your own way. Grow up.

AFTER GRADUATION

riddlersmaze — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:07:14 +0000

things you could do after CSHOOL [the spelling aint wrong]:

- Spend time planning your next step
[ remember, you don't market KNOWLEDGE but SKILL ]

- Learn a skill, that tallies with your discipline (if u liked ur discipline)

- Get certified [never liked the idea, but it's the world we live in]
oh yes, it pays

- The internet is a free resource, start something ONLINE
there are free subdomain host services like this
....u can ask me for some (if cerious)

Response-Ability

aworldupsidedown — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:44:41 +0000

At our Sunday night College Age thing (not really a worship service, not really a bible study, so we don't know anymore) we talked about responsibility, graduation, and life change. Appropriate I guess for the timing and all, but it was weird being on the other side of that talk for the first time. A friend broke down the term "responsibility" into response-ability. It is only with our response that we are able. Nothing will come if we do not act. It made me think about responsibilities as they relate to my life now though in comparison to life before graduation. Life just suddenly takes on so much more responsibility and depth after graduation, or at least that's how I feel about it. It is the first time that you really step out of that track that you have been racing down in education and set your own path. I remember last August when Meg and I moved down to God's Resort. Moving there was like enrolling in a crash course in adulthood/parenting/missions. We had responsibilities, a lot of them. Not just responsibilities to ourselves either; we had responsibilities to kids, their parents, our home, bills, jobs, the church, ministry, the city, and so many others.

Over the last couple of months some friends have moved into our neighborhood as well. It is weird because the sudden influx of young adults has caused an insane increase in the traffic of college students wanting to hang out in our neighborhood. Sometimes it feels like I am living in the dorms again, sometimes it feels like I am living in a communal living room known as my "home". I realized last night though that as much as part of me wants to go back to being that college student with no responsibilities; that isn't me anymore. It can't be and I cannot choose to live like I have no responsibilities without being disobedient to where God has me. It's kind of weird, but I like being an adult. The chaos of having no direction, boundaries or responsibilities is not somewhere I want to go back to. I think it is the same reason we find so much freedom in Christ despite the laws and sacrifices that carries. A certain order in ones life can be very godly and I'm thinking it's one spiritual discipline I cannot afford to ignore.