I've walked at commencement, and have one semester left of my undergraduate career. Honestly, I'm terrified. At the graduation dinner, so many people came up to me and said how proud they were of me, and congratulated me on my achievement. To be honest, I didn't really feel deserving of their praise. I wasn't really a college graduate that night, yet they showered me with gifts. I walked on the commencement lawn, knowing that I'd be coming to the same university campus in a few months, back in the same classrooms. Ultimately, I'm not sure if I'm ready for the "real world", where I'd have to look for a job, interview for a position, and make a living for myself. To prep myself for this, I've looked at different job-seeking websites and looked up jobs that were associated with what i had been studying at university. The process made me incredibly sad. I lacked any real experience, and all the positions seemed to have rather hefty requirements. All in all, I'm just not ready to take the next step.As a result, I've been trying to keep myself busy, to make it seem like my day's not a waste of time. I've been at the research lab, out shopping, going for walks, just to get out of the house.
The job hunting process isn't the only thing getting me down. Lately, I've been feeling rather empty and lonely. I mean, yes, I have friends and I see them rather regularly, but I feel this disconnect. I don't know what's wrong with me. I essentially feel like I have no one to talk to, just letting the feelings simmer inside. the lonely feelings. the sad feelings. Will I ever fall in love? Will I ever find a meaning to my existence? Does anyone care?
I'm not one to resort to horrible things like harming myself. Plus, my current reading material doesn't really support that line of thinking. The summertime, despite its horrible weather and absolute free time, I've started reading books again, simply for the sake of reading, not because I have a paper due the next day. For some reason, I've been drawn to non-fiction writing, and after the whole international incident with the submarine sinking between North Korea and South Korea, I've picked up some books on the lives of people who defected from North Korea. It's just something I don't really know about, or rather, the world doesn't really know about. I found it fascinating and heart-breaking at the same time. I guess in a way it's really helped me stay positive. It makes me feel grateful that I have a roof over my head, that I have the freedom to do things, that the society I live in treats women well. I wish there was a way that I could help them.
Also, the free time has really let me get all fanciful about my future. I want to visit UNESCO heritage sites, take a trip across the Trans-Siberian railway, from Moscow all the way to Vladivostok. I want to see the glaciers in the US before global warming causes them to disappear forever. I want to see the fjords in Norway. Is it bad that I want to do this more than I want a laboratory position? I mean, granted, i do love my microbes, but I find this all so fascinating too. A part of wishes that i could go back in time, and declare myself as a history major, exploring different cultures and events over time. I just sometimes wish I was stronger, and that I wasn't so afraid.
