As graduation approaches for my CSUN students, I can't help but think of my own graduation from college (the B.A. - not the credential). When I graduated I was 22 years old, had no idea what I was going to do with my life, and just came off a series of major rejections for things I felt I wanted to do. I only knew I was heading to Fresno about a week after graduating to live there for six weeks again.
Now that three years have passed by, I'm pretty sure I never imagined myself where I am today. I imagined myself living comfortably in Pasadena (or somewhere around the San Gabriel valley) with a nice teaching job or perhaps a marketing job, but whatever I ended up getting right out of college. Successful and hopefully a lot thinner to prove to everyone who had ever rejected me that I was worth something.
In the three years since graduating, I did none of that. After graduating college I went back to SLO to get my teaching credential and never stayed anywhere long. In the past three years I've had six different addresses, transitioned to and from seven different jobs (some paid, some not), lived with a family of 9, and had six different roommates (not counting the roommates from my summer in Fresno which is ups it to 15). Instead of transition out of college into a season of consistency and stability I went into a season of constant change, frequent transition, and a lot of unknowns.
It was difficult not to be jealous of my friends who seemed to jump right from college to a job and to a stable life. How could I not be jealous of those who found steady churches, significant others, who have been able to buy homes and new cars. In the last three years I found more rejection, failure, loneliness, and debt (thanks to the wonderful invention of student loans). While I understand my friends haven't had this easy fanciful lifestyle, I can't help but feel like I'm not a real adult, fully living out my mid-20's.
But I've been made a better person through the last three years. I've had a lot of pride chiseled off (more like with a jackhammer than a chisel), a lot of self-worth questioned and answered, and a lot of opportunity for God to show his faithfulness in the midst of some really crappy stuff. I have a better idea of who I really am - the vibrant, bold, emotional, feeler, visioner, exorter, teacher - that I know God has created me to be - someone who loves photography, talking really fast, and spending large amounts of time with the same people because she loves them. Someone who is easily swept up in her emotions and although she doesn't cry much, her heart feels things deeper than words could ever explain, someone who loves her friends deeply, perhaps more than they would know, who loves laughing and making jokes, and gets easily excited about the little things. This is the person I may not have seen if I settled into a life right after college. I had to work to find her.
Now that I'm 25 - I would have thought I would have a lot of things I don't. A large pay check, a fancy apartment, a full sized bed (I'm still sleeping on my faithful twin bed I had in college), a boyfriend or even a husband. But while I don't have any of those things I still have a bed that is extremely comfortable, a thinner waistline, a new city to explore, newly developed friendships, a church where not everyone looks like me, and experiences I never thought possible. And while it definitely is not easy being single (no matter how many times people tell me to not worry about the timeline of when I need to be in a relationship), at this moment, I'm happy to explore who I am without being in one.
Sometimes being an adult doesn't mean having it all together. It means going on an adventure to not be so afraid of doing things any more.
