Unemployment

In October, I will join the hordes of students who take another step on their journey to become self sufficient adults; in October I finally graduate.

Now this may not seem to be a big deal to other people, who take a 3 year course, and faster than you can order another serving of sharksfin dumplings, all of a sudden they are in togas walking up a stage to grasp a sheet of paper declaring them as having finished so and so at this and that university. This is a big deal for me since it has been 7 years since I've started college, and somehow I find myself at a crossroads, not knowing what to do.

You see after doing something for a very long period of time, you find it becomes routinary; the walks down the familiar hallways become therapeutic, the way the sun shines through the cement slats in one of the buildings, the endless babble of overexcited freshmen as you make your way to your favorite stall in the bathroom since its the one with the exhaust fan that blows away the smoke from an illegal cigarette (or more illicit substances).

I find I have been a student for so long, I don't seem to know what I will be after graduating. Graduating for me is a loss of identity, a loss of purpose. Graduation is the shining light at the end of the tunnel, but no one tells you what happens when you step out into the great beyond. Will I burn? Fall off a cliff? Shatter into a thousand sparkling fragments akin to that fake vampire from that disgusting drivel Stephanie Meyer calls a book?

I am a pessimist, and see graduation as the end of a journey, the loss of control, the entrance into unemployment. Its scary. Its terrifying. Its necessary.

How is it a sheet of paper is powerful enough to declare 'Yes, YES. This person, THIS PERSON right here has MADE IT. He has GRADUATED, ladies and gentlemen. He is good to go, ready to work, another cog in the machine, RIGHT HERE'.

It sickens me. It also sickens me probably because on some unconscious level, I feel I don't deserve it. I feel I do not deserve that piece of paper that cost me seven years of my life and thousands in school fees. Why? Maybe its the school system. My value system. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I'm scared.

E) All of the above

Maybe it'll be ok. Maybe a shark wont chew off my head once I step into the light. Loss of control has always been something I find hard to deal with, but as a friend once told me, 'don't think, just do it'. Such simple words with such complicated ramifications. So be it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have more ads to browse in Jobstreet.

Oh, and welcome to my blog.