graduation – Molly On the Move

I’ve been lugging around a disposable camera for the past few months. It is a clunky, sensitive, and altogether inconvenient way to capture life. But there is something I respect about The Disposable in our instant day and age. It delays gratification. You have no idea if a shot is majesty or travesty until weeks after you’ve taken it. In some respects, then, The Disposable paints a more accurate portrait of post-grad life than digital technology. There is a lag between cause and effect. You can’t just snap your fingers and have a job, a graduate school acceptance, a future plan. You snap the shutter 27 times, and hope that after the film is developed, perhaps one of those 27 exposures will result in a proper image.

Besides, it doesn’t break when you drop it on concrete. How very practical.

Over three weeks have passed since I graduated from the University of Georgia, and I am completely in denial. I haven’t moved so much as a coffee mug out of my house in Athens. I am riding my lease out through the summer, after which the house I am renting, along with my bubble of denial, will be unceremoniously demolished.

I have graduated and don’t know what to do next.

On May 10, Saxby Chambliss delivered the commencement address at UGA’s graduation. Back when Chambliss ran his Senate campaign in 2002, I was twelve years old. I remember thinking that “Saxby Chambliss” was the coolest name known to politics, and for that reason twelve-year-old-me was a staunch Chambliss supporter. Nevertheless, I have to admit that I became jealous when I found out that Julie Andrews spoke at CU Boulder’s graduation. And while she may not have said anything particularly groundbreaking, leave it to the Queen of Genovia to make hackneyed graduation advice sound mildly refreshing:

“Keep learning as you go. Acknowledge that there will be fear and adversity. Then go out and kick butt.”

Over the past three weeks, I’ve surrounded myself with the comforts of idle life – the beach, chocolate, books, and two seasons of Scandal. In other words, I’ve been neither learning, nor acknowledging, nor kicking butt. After three weeks, I think it’s time for the denial period to come to a close. I may not know what to do with my life, but it is time to learn from and through this identity crisis of mine. Butt-kicking may be far off, but it too shall come.

So here’s to a summer of post-grad learning, of solving problems like Maria and slurping spoonfuls of sugar. Congrats grads!

-MB

(photo thanks to Amanda)

Tag: graduation

The Disposable

“Good luck in the real world”