A Preview of Post-Grad Life

This summer acted as a preview. A preview of working full-time. A preview of being a young professional in New York City. A preview of adulthood. A preview of everything that happens after graduation.
While I am very excited to have one more year of living mere streets away from the majority of my best friends and the ability to take 2pm naps on weekdays, I think I’m ready to be spit out into the ‘real world’ when it’s all over.
I feel extremely lucky to have had a great internship this summer as a legal reporter. I learned a ton about an industry with which I was unfamiliar until starting my job and met people that I admire professionally and will keep in touch with as I start my career.
For the first time in a long time, I didn’t dread going to work. I was afforded autonomy and was never micromanaged. It was refreshing to be trusted by my superiors to do my work well on my own, take initiative, start my own projects, and to ask for help when necessary. And I did ask, which was new, too.
I have always prided myself on my independence and ability to ‘figure it out’ on my own. But throughout college, I have had the good fortune of learning from professors and friends that asking for help at the right time is a sign of strength and good judgement.
Working 40 hours a week is not the sweetest spoonful to swallow, but I am not the first and certainly not the last to think so. Having coworkers that helped me to grow and trusted my work made 40 hours a week for 10 weeks fly by.
Not that I have much experience being a young professional at all, let alone in different cities, but I can’t think of a better place to be one than New York. And, more specifically, the Financial District. (I’ve heard it called FiDi, but I will not be partaking in that tomfoolery.) Walking the streets during rush hour is electrifying. Watching sharply-dressed men and women of all ages strut up and down the streets between institutions and behemoth buildings with a palpable know-how never gets old. At once, I feel unworthy and inspired that I am among them, another one of the many working jobs we spent years preparing for in school.
It’s crazy to me that this life I’ve lived this summer counts as adulthood, kind of. Yes, my parents still help me with rent and order my contacts for me. But I pay most of my bills, buy my own groceries, decide how I spend my money and more importantly, how I don’t spend my money.
At the beginning of the summer, I said yes to absolutely everything because I’M IN THE BIG CITY BABY! But now I gladly turn down plans to see a $30 concert for a few bands I don’t care much about because my $13 1.5L bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and a documentary or two makes me about 50 times happier (ah, the change 2.5 months can bring). Saving money and not going to bed late make me happy (?????).
More than paying bills or cleaning my apartment, I feel that’s what makes me ready to be a real person in this ‘real world’ everyone’s talking about. I delight in a night in, saving money and feeling no guilt. I also love going out to a dinner and spending a stupid amount of money on 2 tiny tacos and a margarita. And I know when to choose which for optimum fun-times. Adulthood is an oxymoron.
When I move back to this crazy city post-grad, I think I’ll be ready to take it on for good (or until I just can’t take it anymore and resign myself to living in the suburbs).
I have a lot of things to thank for preparing me, including my wonderful parents and my favorite place, Syracuse University. But right now, this is a thank you to a summer in the big apple and a great internship for the preview.
To what’s next!
