As of Tuesday, I graduate in four days. Incredible.
Even with finals week going on, the questions asked of me and assuredly of most other graduating seniors strike more fear in my eyes than any essay prompt.
“What do you have planned after graduation?”
Yikes. Graduation? Like, the real world? Pay checks and property taxes and morning commutes?
As if I’d be hurrying through Olscamp Hall at 9:31 a.m. every morning for the rest of my life. As if I’d be forever wallowing away at the Union, where you rush to make it before they stop serving pizza by the slice.
As if there were no punch in, punch out, but rather a life revolved on semesters and exam weeks.
That life’s gone in four days, the last I checked my calendar, and I check it every day.
Even worse: “Where do you see yourself in five years?”
It’s an arbitrary date full of artificial assumptions of hopes turning into real plans and dreams turning into realities.
It’s like seeing the technological differences between a phonograph and a record player and asking someone in 1970 to predict the iPod.
I feel most like Roger Kahn, author of the American classic “The Boys of Summer.” He was a 24-year-old journalist (sounds familiar…) hired at an impeccably young age to cover the Brooklyn Dodgers in the early 1950s.
Asked how he got the position — “How could I explain that what had gotten me aboard the Dodger plane that morning was nothing more than a succession of miracles?”
How could I have known as a high school student dreaming of a life in radio broadcasting I’d soon become a print journalism major, interview a sitting U.S. Senator and cover a half a dozen presidential campaign stops?
Maybe it’s best not to have a strict plan. Maybe I can just work really hard, take opportunities when they come and hope for a succession of miracles.
If living in the moment unpredictably got me to where I am now, I’m content with relying on the same strategy post-graduation.
Where will I be in five years? For all I know, writing baseball for a newly-created Brooklyn team.
