Growing up, a day home sick from school
meant a day lying on the couch next to my dad’s home office, listening in on
his numerous conference calls, taking comfort in the ringing phone and faraway
voices. Now many years older and generally wiser, it’s amazing how much my
concept of adulthood still relies on the idea that to sit at a desk and talk on
the phone is to be an adult. And so, over the past year, as tomorrow’s
graduation ceremony crept ever-closer, I found myself growing more and more
anxious about the phone call of my future that failed to come.
You see, no matter how many stories I
heard about the wonderful adventures Iowa students went on to have after their
own Commencement ceremony, I could never shake the sense that the only
adventure I was supposed to have was to find the cubicle that contained the
answers to the rest of my life. To answer that telephone call from the future
that would change “growing up” to “grown-up” as I became a fully formed adult.
And yet, as I agonized over the
continuous dial tone of confusion that haunted me throughout my post-graduation
planning, I realized that if adulthood really were to call, my “hello” would
more likely be answered by a superficially soothing computer voice listing menu
options. Press 1 for grad school, 2 to join the corporate ladder, 3 to backpack
through Europe, 4 to beg my parents for a spot on the couch. Graduation, at its
very core, seems to be a question, not a statement, as we all decide for
ourselves where the next few years will take us.
Faced with an endless amount of
questions and not a single answer, my anxieties surrounding the end of my
senior year did eventually begin to diminish. It seems even uncertainty can become
calmingly monotonous if taken in large enough doses. And as my self-effacing
jokes about my futureless self became more and more common, something
incredible happened. I finally realized that no one- not even my friends who
already had jobs awaiting them at amazing companies or my dad with his phone
that continues to ring- has it all figured out. And that “figuring it all out”
isn’t something that can be checked off a to-do list or completed on a final
degree audit.
I finally began to understand that
becoming an adult is something that happens far away from a desk. That, if done
right, growing up is a process that should never end.
In reality, there may actually be some
truth to my smaller self’s version of adulthood. This next chapter of our lives
probably will be filled with numerous telephone calls. But my wish for all of
us is that they be more often to friends and family than to business associates-
phone calls filled with the details of recent adventures, of job promotions, of
upcoming weddings and visits with college friends. Graduation, for many of us,
may mark the end of essays, professors and all-nighters, but it certainly does
not mark the end of growing up.
And what a relief it is to know that
growing older and growing wiser does not stop today.
