“How do you feel?” adults — like real adults, not legal adults — ask with a smile, as they clearly see the chaos behind my eyes.

I, along with thousands of other seniors who are not delusional with grandeur of grad school, am in the midst of my last first week of school. In my brain, 100 bite-sized versions of me run around to filing cabinets anxiously, like in that episode of Spongebob Squarepants — “She’s gone to this $60,000-per-year institution for three and a half years, and all she knows is fine dining and breathing.”

“Do you have any plans post-grad?” they inevitably follow-up, as if they can sense exactly which questions I don’t want to hear. “Do any of us really have plans? We have agendas with dates penciled in of things that are only vaguely more interesting to us than laying in bed,” is what I think to make myself feel a little better as I say, “No, not yet.”

“Well, did you like going to Syracuse?” they throw a final relatable dart. This one makes me think. As with all relatable answers, I really need a listicle to explain my feelings, so:

I thought I would learn more in my classes.
In high school I was pretty aware of when I learned something because before the learning I didn’t know a thing, and then after I knew the thing. Don’t get me wrong — I have learned. Freshman year I was an idiot, and now I’m an idiot that has taken oceanography. Honestly, though, any experience that I think of where I learned anything about myself or the world, has for the most part been on my own time.

Sometimes I really hated this campus.
Damn, this school can be draining. Because of the aforementioned lack of learning in classes, you are expected to excel in an absurd number of extracurricular, work and social groups. Or maybe that’s just my unattainable expectations for myself. But, seriously, sometimes the people and the workload and the stresses are all draining, and I know we are in a bubble and that the majority of what we do doesn’t matter anyways, but it also really matters, so why are people jerks? Why are unhealthy lifestyles normalized? Why haven’t I slept eight hours in years?

Sometimes I really loved this campus.
I met great people. I met people I’ll stay close with for the foreseeable future and I also met people whose Facebook statuses I can gossip about for the foreseeable future with the first group of people. This campus taught me a lot about myself. It taught me about what I want, what I want to be for the world and how to shotgun a beer. I enjoyed the Darties? Disappointment to my mother? — and the days in bed. I loved the highs, and I can also say I loved the lows. I’m not in one so now I can be all uppity and act like they were good for me.

I’m tired.
I’m just tired. Sleeping is the first thing to get cut on the to-do list. Well, if I’m being honest, the first thing is laundry, and the second thing is showering but the third thing is sleep. I’m tired of doing, doing, doing, and I kind of just want to be.

I’m happy.
By this point, the adults asking questions have surely all walked away scoffing, “Another 20-something monologues about importance, belonging and the ups and downs of their lives — like they have any clue. “Want to grab a drink after work, Bill?” “Sure, let me see if I can get a sitter.”

Patty Terhune is a senior policy studies and television, radio and film dual major. She should probably just start keeping a diary instead. Follow her on Twitter @pattyterhune or reach her at paterhun@syr.edu.

Published on January 18, 2017 at 11:58 pm