By Colby Tortorici
How does one … do … the adult?
That is the question that I am faced with as I enter my last semester of college, and let me tell you, I am stressed.
I am a 21-year-old grown adult man and the thought of TurboTax frightens me greatly.
Once I’m done with college (I’m a journalism major, of course), I’ve got to go and find a job with benefits and good pay so I can actually find somewhere to live, and this is all in a landscape that somehow requires 40 years of experience and six doctorates for entry-level jobs. And I’ve got to find that quick. I’m one of the lucky ones, though. I came out with under $40,000 of student loans. I’ll only be paying my debt off for several years. How blessed am I? My books this semester only cost $120 too! I’m living my best life! I literally hate all of this.
Working an almost-full-time job while trying to graduate from college while not completely obliterating my social life is not a fun thing. It’s completely draining. Do you know what waking up at 4 a.m. every day to give other people coffee while pretending that I am happy that they’re here does to someone? If you aren’t going to put at least a dime in my tip jar at that ungodly hour of the morning, I do not want to hear it. I now am lucky enough to make most of my living off of writing, but still. Rough times.
I know, everyone else goes through this exact same phase and I’m being completely dramatic, but I’ve dedicated almost four years of my life to this degree, I deserve to rant in an SEO-friendly column. Let me live.
Is there a point to said column, though? Well, not really. I just like to complain, and I figured all of my millennial sistren and brethren would like to join in on the fun. We’re all dying, so we might as well have fun while we’re doing it.
Alright, so we’re graduated, about $30,000 or so in debt, and need a job. Mind you, 98% of jobs in my field require a degree to even apply, so I can’t even get a head start on that side of things. So, I have about a month to find a job with benefits before the insurance is gone. Well, that’s improbable! Thank god I died for three years of my life for this.
Once you’re like, firmly into adult life, things seem to be pretty good. You know, you have a place to live, probably some healthcare (maybe dental if you’re bougie), and you’re generally doing pretty okay. But that transition, oof. That is going to be like one of those falls where the entire room was for some reason looking at you, and it’s really big, and you drop everything that you’re carrying, and you hear people stifling their laughter because they can’t actually tell if you’re hurt enough to make their laughter inappropriate, and you’re still laying on the ground because you’re really embarrassed, and then someone who you know but aren’t close enough with to make things not awkward runs over to help, and then you’re still on the ground because you’re trying to figure out if you should play it off as a joke or if you need to just swallow your pride and get up and say nothing, but no matter what you pick its the wrong choice, and then you go to the bathroom to hide for three hours because you’re embarrassed, and then everyone is wondering where you are so it just makes things worse, and then you’re crying in the bathroom and everyone knows that it’s you because no one has seen you all day. Probably something like that.
Either way, moving into adulthood is a scary, scary prospect. I don’t want to do it, but I need to, and life isn’t going to wait for me. So, I’ll get over it. I’ll make it. I know I will. But, in the meantime, I’ll be screaming inside for a couple of months, just until I get that degree. Then I’ll be screaming on the outside as the job search begins. 2019 was … she wasn’t great.
2020 is about to be my personal hell though. Let’s get it.