So I graduated from college six months ago today. As such, it seems like an appropriate day to
give this blog the ending that I’ve been meaning to give it for approximately
six months, plus or minus a day or two.
[When I say appropriate, I mean that I should have probably done this
six months ago, plus or minus a day. But
for various reasons, not least of which is my incredible inability to update my
blog on time, I didn’t. So today seems
like an appropriate day to do it :P]
To begin, let’s recap what’s happened since we met last: I
graduated from MIT, I spent a summer at home doing very few productive (but
many wonderful) things, and I moved across the country (again) to start
graduate school in Florida. I gave my
first lab meeting of grad school (and it wasn’t completely horrible), I
finished my first class of grad school, and as of next Wednesday I’ll be
finished with my first semester. So, you
know, nothing major.
I’ve spent a ridiculously long time neglecting to write this
post, for a multitude of reasons. One of
the reasons I took so long to write this was because this blog is kind of
irrelevant now. I started it to keep my
family up to date on my life at MIT, and that’s over. There are no longer “Two Years Left Here”, as
my title proclaims, but instead negative six months. The purpose of the blog isn’t gone- obviously
I still would like to have some method of keeping people up to date with my
life. But I’ve grown out of this blog, I
think. The notion of a weekly post, now
that I’m in grad school, is slightly ridiculous. (To be honest, you all saw how ridiculous it
was even in undergrad. I’m at least
twice as busy now as I was then, so you can imagine what my posting schedule
would look like.)
The major reason though, is that I wasn’t ready to
acknowledge the end of college. Even though
I’m kind of just avoiding ‘real life’ by going to grad school and continuing my
education for another five-ish years, not being in college was a decently large
transition. For one thing, I get paid
now, and I have things to pay for. (Side
note, adulthood thus far seems to be pretty much just trying to pay for all of
the things, and making money to be able to do that. It’s great :P). I also can’t just walk down the hall and chat
with my friends about random crap- I have to put in an effort to contact
people. Apparently adulthood also
includes more using the phone for its actual purpose and calling people, rather
than just texting.
Everyone says that college will be the best four years of
your life. Granted, everyone also says
that high school is the best four years of your life. People are really great at contradicting
themselves, come to think of it. But
let’s focus on the college portion of things, since that’s what this blog has
been about.
Was college the best four years of my life? I certainly hope not. Don’t get me wrong, I loved a lot of
college. I LOVED a lot of things that
happened in college. But there were also
a lot of not-so-great things about college- the stress, the homework, the
tests, the trying to figure out how to live on my own-ish for the first time. And, quite frankly, I’m only 23. If I’m already done with the best four years
of my life, the downhill slide from here is really going to suck. Luckily, post-college life is pretty good so
far, so I don’t think I have to worry too much about the good parts of life
being behind me already.
Although I won’t say that college was the best four years of
my life, I’ll acknowledge that it was a pretty great four years. It’s an interesting exercise to examine how
much I’ve changed in four years. At a
cursory glance, I wouldn’t say that I’ve changed that much. I’m still a complete nerd, getting excited
about scientific advances, my favorite TV shows, and excellent books. I’m still a fairly quiet person. I’m still terrified of failing, and of being
hit in the head by things, and of public speaking. But at the same time, I’m a very different
person from who I was when I left home to go to college. I’m leagues better at pretending to be
confident when I’m not. I’m also actually
confident a much larger portion of the time than I was prior to college. And despite the fact that I’m still terrified
of all the same things, I’m also much better at overcoming those fears.
I won’t credit MIT with all of those changes, but I do think
that it played a major role in changing me for the better. I obviously learned a lot in college. That is sort of the point after all. But beyond the academic stuff, I was also
constantly learning things unrelated to my major. I learned about myself by going through the
variety of trials and tribulations that go into getting a college degree. I learned about a wide variety of beliefs and
viewpoints by interacting with the diverse group of people around me. I learned about the importance of having a
strong set of beliefs. I learned about
the importance of being willing to listen to others, and of being willing to
amend your strong set of beliefs if they’re proven flawed. I learned how not to be terrified of public
speaking (the secret, at least for me, is to know the transitions between your
slides, and to practice many times before the presentation). I learned how to ask questions. I learned how to look for the answers
myself. I learned how to actually be passionate about something,
rather than just saying you’re passionate about it.
Possibly the biggest thing that I, personally, learned in
college though, was how to ask for help.
This is something that I’ve always been terrible at. It ties into my fear of failure, I think- I
never want to be seen as anything less than completely competent, at whatever I’m
doing. Obviously this is a ridiculous
task. It’s impossible to be good at everything, particularly if you’re just
starting to learn how to do something.
Nevertheless, it’s a task that I started out with for myself when I went
to college. Luckily it’s not one that I
graduated with.
Learning to ask for help wasn’t a gradual process so much as
something I figured out all at once. I’ve
discussed both of these before, but the two catalytic points in my ability to
ask for help were when I was told I was a terrible presenter (paraphrasing) and
during the week where everyone on campus was talking about imposter syndrome. These experiences happened
relatively close together, and both of them were solved by having open, honest
discussions with people that I trust. I
know my parents are going to sigh a bit in frustration when they read this,
because they both tried to explain that to me several hundred times when I was
growing up. But another thing I learned
in college is that in order to really internalize any information, I need to
both do it myself and come to the decision to do so on my own. In other words, I’m only good at accepting
help when I’ve made a conscious decision to do so.
I will put money on the fact that I wouldn’t have gotten to
where I am today without the help of a wide variety of people. I’ve thanked the majority of you several
times over, both in person and on this blog.
But it bears repeating: so thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to
anyone who has taken the time out of your day to read this. If you’ve gotten to this point in the post
(which is, once again, more than 1000 words long without the benefit of any pictures to make it interesting), odds are that you care about
me on some level. [Or you’re just curious about what I do with my life now,
which is totally fair.] And since I
have no delusions about my popularity, I know that anyone who cares about me
enough to read through my ramblings is someone that I also care about, and have
probably asked for help with one thing or another at some point in my
lifetime. It takes a village to raise a
child, or in this case, an Alycia. There
aren’t words to really describe how grateful I am to be where I am today, and getting here would have been impossible without everyone I’ve met in the past 23 years of
my life. So I’ll stop my ramblings and
end this blog with a thank you. It’s
been a great two-ish years of writing- thank you for your two-ish years of
reading, and for your variable number of years helping me become the person I
am today. I’ve obviously needed all the help I can get.
All the best,
Alycia
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