Post-College Diaries

Heinz History Museum in Pittsburgh, PA | November 2017

College graduation. The pinnacle of one's many years of education. Finally, after 16 years, something tangible rewarding those countless all-nighters spent preparing for finals, writing essays, and designing PowerPoint slides for some group project you were forced into.

The days leading up to graduation are a nonstop party: champagne toasts, karaoke nights at your favorite college town bars, and barbecues and darties galore. When it's finally time to walk across the stage in your ill-fitting cap and gown, you can't help but smile at the fact that you now are the proud holder of a degree that will hopefully get you the job of your dreams.

At least, that's how I felt. The honeymoon stage of college graduation lasted around a few weeks. I moved home from Pittsburgh, where I had attended Duquesne University. Luckily, I was still close with my high school friends, so I managed to maintain a steady social life throughout most of the summer.

Pittsburgh skyline | January 2018

However, about midway through August, things started falling apart, more or less. I don't mean my friendships fell apart, but the relatively consistent social schedule I had had slowly faded into countless nights spent alone in bed watching Netflix. My day-to-day life transformed into one characterized by working eight hours a day (as I had been all summer), going to the gym, eating dinner, and getting in bed at a modest 7pm.

For a little bit, I appreciated this peaceful schedule. I was getting my sh*t done at work, keeping my bod in check at the gym, and still managing to binge on a few of my favorite Netflix shows and YouTube channels before bed.

After about two months of this routine, however, a thought has struck me: unless I do something to change this monotonous schedule, this is it. My high school friends, whom I had become accustomed to making weeknight and weekend plans with, are wrapped up with their own schedules. And, unlike me, they work with people our age.

My workplace, on the other hand, consists mostly of 50 to 65-year-old individuals. Although I love my coworkers and genuinely think of them as family, they're not exactly the people I'd make plans with outside of work, ya feel?

As they have become increasingly consumed by plans with coworkers (and classmates, in the case of my friend in dental school), I have slowly dwindled into greater loneliness. The typical ways to make new friends as a 22-year-old do not apply to me: my gym is an all-women gym constituted mostly by middle-aged women who, like my coworkers, probably don't want to hit up happy hour at the local taco joint after work. I tried the good ol' Tinder and Bumble to try and meet some fine fellas, only to become increasingly discouraged by the lack of decent males in my general vicinity.

This is not a sob story, and I'm not looking for pity. But post-college depression is real. It's hard to stay motivated in an environment in which you feel stagnant. At college, I was free to join clubs pertaining to my interests, or to take classes in subjects that grasped my attention. I was surrounded by friends who felt like family, who lived in the bedroom directly above me in the beat-up, mouse-infested house that we still made our home.

I know a lot of opportunities and experiences await me in the future and that this stagnation is not permanent, but for right now, it's a struggle. Even memories as simple as watching a movie with my four roommates cause tears to well up in my eyes. It's crazy how experiences as seemingly insignificant as those can hold so much meaning, especially once you realize that your life will never again be like how it was in college.

I'm still searching for my next adventure, and I know that, in time, I will find it. But for now, I'm trying to bloom in the soil where I have been planted.