College Retrospective from an Academic Addict

Hello beautiful person. Thanks for checking out my links! I’m happy to welcome you to my blogpage.

This project is an outgrowth of two things. First, I love to journal. I’ve kept a semi-consistent record of my life for seven years now, and I’ve always thought it’d be funny if they ever became published. Journaling’s fun and cool and good for the soul, I know, but it can’t help being a bit of a loner activity. It would be more exciting to write for an othered audience for once.

A brief aside, who exactly is my audience? Well, I almost guarantee that you know about my Instagram, since that site is the only place I left this link. Given that, I’ve guessed that you’re either a family member (welcome kapamilya!) or you’re a Gen-Z twenty-something with great taste in mutuals, like me.

That thought brings me to the second motivator here. I just graduated college! You should check out my insta if you want to see what that looks like. You’re in the right place, though, if you want to know how that feels like. Anyways, the most common question I received, regardless of age or intimacy, is “what’s your next move?”

I had to wait almost a whole week for good weather because Washington.

The short answer is, focus on being an adult for once. Make money, sleep well, and tend to the relationships I need. Because of that, I got a full-time job and took steps to lay out alternatives if and when this job stops. After that, though, I’m really not sure. I love my city, my friends, and my family, but I don’t imagine myself growing old in Bellingham forever. Also, I don’t really know what I want from life yet. Do I want to be a lawyer? Part of me is completely convinced that it’s just a status thing. I want to go to grad school, yes, but I’m simply not sure if lawyering’s what I want to do for the rest of my life, given the startup costs.

In short, what’s my next move? Work for a while, be normal, and think about my next next move.

But, in case we haven’t reconnected in a while, I wanted to leave a few thoughts about the last four years of my life down below. I wrote this quite a bit earlier, so apologies if it changes in style too drastically.

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So, yes, I graduated from the business and economics college from my school just last Saturday with a degree in Politics/Philosophy/Economics. I did this in exactly four years. A little later than expected, given that I was an AP kid in high school and I did well on a bunch of exams, but a lot earlier than it could have been with my many hiccups along the way. I ended with around a 3.25 GPA. Not stellar, but not beyond saving. In any case, I had a great time in most of my classes, I love what I studied, and I’m leaving with a lot of good friends and good memories.

Looking back on the past four years in a big picture sense, it’s easy to discount freshman and sophomore year. My first two quarters were the quintessential college experience: I went to a few dorm and house parties, I had a few pseudo-dates with girls from class or around campus, and I got adopted as a groupie by Western’s hockey team. Then, COVID hit and everything sucked. I flunked out of my first remote quarter and spent sophomore year picking up the pieces of my academic and social lives. I moved into an eight-man house with some of the hockey guys. Loved them to death, but I could never live in a place like that ever again. I’ll never forget the time when my very own living room looked like a New York sidewalk. It’s almost a blessing how messy the house was, because nothing grosses me out anymore.

The latter half of college was relatively sunny. Sure, the class work became much harder, but in junior year, as the world slowly opened up, I just came off of two sweet road trips and I finally put something kinda cool on my resume as a TA with one of my favorite professors. Also, my family got a puppy and I adopted a cat.

Lil bro was so small, but he is NOT this little anymore. He's like twice the size of Scruffers now

In spring quarter of junior year, I rekindled my faith. For context, I was raised in private Catholic school for eleven years. In high school, I took a long break from church and the lifestyle. Since I didn’t have to go to church, of course I wouldn’t! But anyways, after philosophy class one day, I spotted my classmate at an outreach booth in Red Square. He’s a deep thinker and a talker, so I figured this would be interesting. I stayed at the booth for two hours or so. Predictably, I accepted the invite to attend the worship service on Friday, and after a few introductions and another invitation to small group, I never seriously looked back.

I found some of my dearest friends during this time. No matter your opinions on belief, one incredible gift I’ve been given in the time since is the ability to show gratitude. In the past few weeks, I’ve been given so many physical affirmations (like, cards,) that it reminded me how contingent my success has been.

What I mean is this. I just graduated, and I feel so good. But I know that I would have failed if I wasn’t fiercely supported along the way. Sometimes, the way forward seemed impossible, and I’d certainly become the College Dropout ®. Yet, I had so many people, from friends to mentors to professors to family, who refused to let me fail. I have countless cherished memories from the past, and those memories got me through some of my toughest times. I wish my arms were five hundred feet long so I could hold all of them. Truly, if we share some of those memories, I deeply thank you. You helped me survive, and you helped me make it.

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Yeah, so there’s a few of my thoughts from the past four years. I don’t get to be cheesy very often, so don’t get used to it, but I really appreciate everything I’ve been given up to this point.

Moving forward, I’ve had a few ideas for fun things to write, and I’ll try them out in future posts. Expect to see something every two or three weeks, depending on my moods and tastes. Also, let me know if I should post some of the things I wrote for my degree. I'm always decently proud of my writing at the time, but I rarely go back and look at it years later. I've got three areas of study, so a lot of things interest me. Until then, thanks so much for reading.