Just For Fun

When trying to help others shows how I try to help myself.

The metaphor:

Last week, I thought about what advice I’d give to this spring’s graduates. I think it’s possible that the outcome showed more about what I still need than what I have to offer. I was brainstorming with a friend over cocktails on a sunny California day, and I was sunburned — because contrary to the advice in Baz Luhrmann’s famous graduation speech, I had forgotten to wear sunscreen. But it’s still fun to think about it!

The story:

A couple weeks ago, I drove by a local college on a rare sunny day. I was admiring the campus’ bright green grass and white-flowering trees when a fluttering motion caught my eye.

I looked closer and saw that someone in cap and gown was scrambling up a giant plaque bearing the college’s name. On second glance, I saw that three graduates were already sitting on top. They scooted over to give the climber room to sit down, legs dangling. Four adults in pastels stood six feet away, holding up their phones to take pictures.

Oh yeah! I thought. Graduation! Somehow, the season always sneaks up on me. It’s often weeks before Rochester summer and more than a month before grade school lets out.

My college graduation was 17 years ago. As I passed the little scene, it struck me that I’m likely closer in age to those parents than the students sitting on that sign. Still, it’s fun to remember that moment – to use today’s young people as a portal to the past.

Last week, I spent a few days with a friend who, like me, lived in DC after graduating. We talked about our old neighborhood, our favorite orders at the breakfast place and best finds at the thrift shop. I remembered showing up to dinner parties and game nights at their apartment on muggy summer evenings bearing lemonade and Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka, well before I progressed to preferring Old Fashioneds.

“What advice would you give to college graduates?” I asked her. “Or I guess, what do you wish someone had told you?”

She thought for a moment. “Finances, I think. I could’ve used an orientation to managing money.”

I laughed and told her I begged for a financial orientation from an unsuspecting retirement account advisor. This nice man had been dispatched to spend a couple days in the conference room of my second job, answering questions that pertained to that benefit, like how to mix portfolios and set risk tolerances. I’d shown up with a lot of anxiety and a printed statement from every account I had: checking and savings, credit card, retirement, and four student loans.

In a true act of kindness, he walked through it all, then gave me strict assignments. We set a retirement contribution which, together with my rent, loans, and credit card payments, needed to be offset by low spending each month. I would contribute extra income to my savings account until I had three months of expenses, then pay down the principal on my loans, highest interest rate first. He drew out these priorities – 1) right now and long term, 2) nearest term, and 3) medium term – and I kept that piece of paper like a map to safety, diligently following the plan.

There was so much to figure out at once, how to feed myself and work an office job and exercise and still have a social life, and I was so grateful to have some clear operating instructions in at least one area. I knew how to balance a checkbook, but I didn’t know how to make decisions about debt tolerance, what kind of money to spend or save.

“Fortunately, I was used to going to office hours!” I told my friend, then considered how lost I would’ve been without this meeting. “But yeah, when are people supposed to learn all that?”

“What advice would you give?” My friend asked, and I thought back to my second-job self. Besides money, the main concern that kept my stomach in knots was wondering what I would be when I grew up – and therefore, not knowing if I was on track to become it.

I’d been trained to work towards something, or rather, to fear that I wasn’t ready for the future and work to fix that. As I wrote back in April, my middle school teachers warned me I had to buckle down to get ready for high school; in high school, the focus shifted to preparing for college. From APs and SATs to extracurriculars and volunteering, I was constantly considering my high school decisions through a college admissions committee’s eyes.

At the thought of strengthening my application, I’d feel a surge of hope that my interests and activities would be viewed favorably by these strangers. Over time, I started justifying the hard work needed for any activity with the hope of a specific recognition at the end. Doing homework would get me good grades, which would get me offers from colleges and then from jobs. So to find myself graduated and with a job was very exciting – but to find myself still working hard, without understanding how it would lead to my next life phase, was baffling.

Two things started to dawn on me. The first was that if I always sacrificed now for gratification later, I would never arrive at “later.” The second was that the gratifications I had didn’t always come just from sacrifice. For example, my boss specifically cited my semester abroad in Senegal as one of the reasons she hired me.

This made sense, as my job included supporting projects in West Africa, but it also stunned me. For all my resume calculations, studying in Senegal was something I’d done just for me. I’d heard all my life about my mom’s formative studies in France, and we’d gone to visit her brother, who had moved there and started a family. I got the sense that after college, it would be much harder to spend multiple months in another country, learning another language. I particularly wanted to go somewhere I wouldn’t travel on my own. I thought of these goals as so wholly for myself that it never occurred to me to apply the resume-building filter. I never dreamed, much less hoped, that it would help me professionally, and yet, it did.

One of my biggest fears after graduation was that I wasn’t preparing enough for a future I couldn’t yet see. After years of progressing through the structure of school with my age cohort, it had gotten hard to tell who was on track and who was behind, like our teachers had always warned that we might be. This weighed on me, but there still wasn’t a way to tell what would happen if I kept putting one foot in front of the other: doing my job, seeing my friends, following my financial map. What would I become and would I be ready for it?

I thought about taking the LSAT just to return to the structured world of assessments. I thought about applying to a creative writing program and deferring for a year, driving across the country so I’d have stories worth telling when I arrived. I thought about moving to a commune in rural Virginia to live a life like the radical feminist separatists I’d studied, rather than the important but incremental gains my jobs were advocating. All these options seemed better than continuing diligently on a path I couldn’t yet make out: they promised to replace my uncertainty with a clear dogma to follow.

“I’d tell them that the best way to be happy later is to be happy now,” I told my friend. “If there’s something in what they’re enjoying now, that’s the best way to lead to opportunities they’ll enjoy later. If there isn’t, don’t stay in hopes it will be worth it.” Even as I said it, I knew that line wasn’t fully fleshed out between what’s worth pushing through and what’s a sign to leave. I knew that this is still something I’m looking to learn, rather than a lesson I can pass on with confidence. But I know I would’ve liked to hear someone say it to me then, given how much I appreciate my own reminders, even now.

The question: What advice would you give to graduates? What do you wish someone had said to you?

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