Margin Notes: To Do Before Graduation

This column, I realize, is the second to last I’ll write before graduation. Technically, this is the last column I’ll write as a student, considering that my next column will be published after the big day. In honor of this earth-shattering change in my identity, I thought I’d compile a list of quite serious things I need to do before entering the “real world,” as they say (compared to this fake world I’m living in now).

The most urgent of these tasks are the most boring. I should get them out of the way: finish my final papers, return my library books (apologies to anyone else who needed to do research on Italian-Americans or sandwiches this year), and call a voicemail box to repeat my name three times so that they don’t mess it up on graduation. The second “a” in “Rachael” is silent. I must find a graduation dress, a baccalaureate dress, three formal dance dresses, and a dress for a champagne brunch where we drink and dine with our professors at 10 o’clock in the morning because apparently we are old enough for that now. Aside from renting a car, we are considered old enough for a lot of things now.

There are many thank-you notes I need to write to those people who watched me get old. My parents deserve a million thank-you notes for their love — to be precise, 7,989 notes, the number of days I will have lived at the time of publication. I should write thank-you notes to my professors, my friends, to the woman at the dining hall omelet station who asks me about my weekend every Saturday morning, to the boy who still says hello to me even though we had one conversation three years ago. I should say hello to more people. They’ll say hello back here. Who knows what they’ll say in the real world.

The real world has been hyped up a lot. You would think the “real world” is a synonym for “doomsday” from the way people talk about it. As my Italian teacher told us this morning, unprompted: “There’s no rest after college. You don’t get one moment to breathe.” Without any further explanation or consolation, she launched into a lecture about the mafia’s infiltration of the church and government. Power is dangerous.

Speaking of which, I have to find an apartment in Washington, D.C. Do you know anyone renting out their D.C. home? Do you know anyone who lives in D.C. and likes dogs, books, and short walks on the beach? I need to learn about D.C. before graduation. I’ve considered asking my middle school why we never got to take a school trip there. I should watch Night at the Museum 2, House of Cards, and Scandal for some clearly accurate representations of what my life will be like there.

I’m sure I’ll have to buy a new wardrobe after watching Olivia Pope speed around the White House. If I wear slacks, blazers, and sometimes even heels (when my feet aren’t bloated from that D.C. humidity everyone keeps talking about) will I feel like a grown-up? Isn’t that how dress-up works? I should read the news too. I do read the news, but you know how millennials are these days — we get distracted as quickly as goldfish. So my news feed tells me. Once I read all the news, I need to form smart opinions on smart topics so that I can converse with the many smart people who will have smart thoughts in D.C. I need to know everything before I graduate.

I can’t be serious all the time, so I should learn how to read memes. I don’t understand them, but they’re a language people use in order to be funny and thereby make friends. I should practice making friends before graduation, too. I haven’t had to make all new friends since freshman year. Besides, that hardly counts because I had the crutch of orientation and dorm family dinners and student proctors (a.k.a. free therapists) who I could cry and spill all my end-of-the-world problems to while fidgeting with Play-Doh.

In addition to making friends, I should learn how to date before graduation. I don’t attend a city university where I’ve practiced using dating apps and meeting people in coffee shops. No, we’re a tiny school in Maine where you re-date the same people as your friends or go on blind dates with people you already know. Most of the time, dating means seeing that one person during all parts of my day but being unable to approach him because that, of course, would disrupt the status quo. We wouldn’t want that.

Graduation is four weeks away. I have time for all this.

Rachael Allen is a soon-to-be graduating senior at Bowdoin College and a lifelong Canton resident. The recipient of several writing awards, she served as the managing editor for Bowdoin’s student newspaper, the Orient.

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Posted by Rachael Allen on May 4 2018. Filed under Featured Content, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.