Two decades and change of Back to School seasons have conditioned me to feel anxious in August. More than twenty years of my life were spent in some classroom or another. As a toddler I actually threw tantrums because I was jealous of my sister, who was older and got to go to preschool before I did. When I finished college a semester early, at the age of 21, I panicked. Like many fresh grads, I thought that school was my only talent. But three years later it turns out that what I’ve learned after school will take me further than my degree ever could. Here is my Best Of list:

1. It’s okay to change your mind. I took the first job I was offered out of undergrad and, three weeks after graduation, moved to New York. I spent $700 a month to sleep on a stranger’s pull-out couch and worked eight hours a day in a law firm where everyone spoke Russian and smoked in the conference room. My boss used to stand by my desk and talk at me for what felt like an hour at a time while simultaneously cleaning wax out of his ears. Sometimes on my lunch break I would Google map the time it would take for me to walk home — not to my rented pull-out couch, but actually home. When I got out of the elevator every morning, I imagined turning around, pressing the down button, and leaving forever. I was miserable but I was afraid to cry uncle. Afraid that I would be giving up on some vague dream I had of living in New York City, afraid that the friends I had there wouldn’t understand, and the ones I had back home would be disappointed in me. Three months in, my parents came to visit and saw right through my efforts to conceal the fact that I was a wretched, anxiety-ridden wreck. “Come home,” my mom told me. “And you can figure it out from there.” It took a few more weeks for me to give in, but when I did I realized that I was the only person that was making me stay in a situation that wasn’t working for me. Your career plans, the job you have, your living situation: you can change your mind about all of these things, and no one will think less of you. If they do, it’s only because they aren’t as brave. Literally everyone — everyone—is making this stuff up as they go along. Finding what you need and want is an untidy, muddled, eternal process, but it’s also the only way you’ll learn to know yourself.
2. Any job can be bearable for a short time. Looking back now, the law firm gig was not the worst job I’ve worked since school (it’s a tie between customer service representative working the graveyard shift and substitute teacher). I’ve never left a job as abruptly as I left that first one because I’ve learned to cope since then. A terrible job becomes much more bearable if you think of yourself as an actor playing a role. It sounds crazy, but it works. When I worked customer service, I imagined myself as a 1950s telephone operator, perpetually cheery and full of pluck. “How can I help you today?!” I’d chirp into the receiver, speaking in a voice that I would never use as my own. It didn’t matter if customers were rude, if they hung up on me or demanded to speak to my supervisor. It was all a part of some play. Granted, there was no way I could have kept it up forever, but exercising my imagination sure kept me entertained in those early morning hours. Life after school requires the ability to adapt in ways that won’t allow your brain to rust.
3. You are not the measure of your accomplishments and you are not the measure of your age. I graduated school with summa cum laude embossed on my diploma, a semester early with a double major. I had spent time in France, Switzerland, England, and Africa. I could speak a second language. Aside from my parents, nobody cares. Sure, employers will comment on that stuff when they glance over my resume in interviews, utter words that sound impressed. But by the next week, I’ll still be helping children open their applesauce and wiping boogers off their faces. There are two kinds of intelligence: the kind that allows you to do well in school, and the kind that allows you to work a job, get along with your coworkers, and maintain your sanity to boot. But on the flip side, “being older doesn’t necessarily make a person wiser.” At 24 or 25 you might be more mature than someone twice your age. Don’t allow anyone to talk down to you or assume the worst of you just because you’ve been labeled a millennial. Question all authority and know when to speak up, but also know when it’s best to keep your damn mouth shut. Strike a balance between maintaining a quiet confidence in yourself, your intelligence, and your abilities without tipping the scales over into arrogance.
4. Don’t date (or have sex with) someone just because… they make you feel comfortable or they like your body. Don’t sleep with someone who won’t call you back. Don’t waste your valuable mental space thinking about someone who doesn’t want to be with you, because it won’t change anything. If a relationship is not allowing you to grow — or if the person isn’t growing in the same direction as you, or, worse yet, isn’t growing at all — you need to end it. Depending on how long you’ve been together, breaking up will probably feel like an amputation. For weeks after I ended my relationship with a boyfriend of three years, I cried. I cried when I went grocery shopping, in the bathroom at work, in my car sitting in traffic, when I went to sleep at night and in the morning when I woke up. I didn’t eat for three days and didn’t sleep for two nights. Much later I realized that I behaved in such a way because the relationship was not healthy. I didn’t see myself as an individual apart from it, and that is why I had to saw off an arm to save myself from dying of gangrene. Only, unlike some poor Civil War-era slob, my arm grew back.
5. Ask for things. This is one I am still working on. If you are in a place without friends, find at least one person you can stand — regardless of whether you think you have anything in common—and invite them to do something: coffee, a movie, a drink, whatever. If you have just moved to a city or town where you don’t know anyone, ask your friends and family back home if they do. There are fewer people on this planet than it feels like, and every single one understands what it is to be lonely. Ask for money. In job interviews, salaries are negotiable and unless you are 100% certain you will be comfortable with their initial offer, you can ask for more. This sounds obvious but it isn’t: don’t do work for people unless they pay you. Your time and energy are worth something, and if you are continuing to help out that start-up you interned with in college because you “need the experience,” be sure you are getting more than just a resume line out of it. Ask for help. Seek out someone who is doing something you admire — a possible mentor in your field, a blogger you like — and contact them. If you need it and you are able, find a therapist that you can talk to. If you need a therapist and don’t have the resources, find at least one friend or relative that you can call up and cry to when you are feeling sad.
6. Know something about what is happening in the world and have at least one issue you care about and act on, unapologetically and with passion. It doesn’t matter what it is, but believe in something: racial equality, LGBTQ issues, women’s rights, animal rights, environmental preservation. Be anti-war, anti-poverty, anti-hunger, whatever will improve some aspect of our wounded and mangled society. Be informed. If you didn’t before, actually read the newspaper or listen to the news. Don’t rely on the echo chamber of social media or network broadcasts to keep you in the know. Allow events to move you. Act in whatever way you can: whether that’s writing an article, talking about it with your friends, going to a protest, signing a petition, or even voting, as long as you do more than just that. Know that whatever candidate you elect will be a disappointment, no matter what they promised. Be open to argument and other opinions. Almost everything has more than one side and multiple interpretations, but be unapologetic and confident in your beliefs, and believe in something good. Try not to be on a side that hurts more than it helps.
7. Practice your art. Have a project that you can continually improve upon. So you went to school for poetry and are now working as an administrative assistant. You were a runner in high school but you stopped when you didn’t have access to a track. Start again. If you are having good conversations, if you are reading, going to movies, if you are writing in your journal or taking a class outside of work or running through your neighborhood three times a week, you are more than halfway there and you still have an infinite space to grow. You will never be finished. What you do for money does not — and should not — define you. That holds true whether you are bussing tables or you’re the mayor. The false idea that your job will completely fulfill you is responsible for a lot of crushed hopes and dreams, so find other things that make you feel good and find the time to do them. If you aren’t successful yet, don’t worry and keep working. I hear 29 is the year it all starts to happen.
8. Take care of yourself. Not just your body, but also your soul. No matter how many hours you work, find a way to carve out time for personal care. Exercise. I didn’t do this until I was 23, relying on a decent metabolism to get me by, and boy do I wish I had started doing it sooner. It’s not about having defined abdominal muscles, but about tending to the only vessel you have to get yourself from one end of life to the next. Don’t view your body as your masterpiece or a project to improve. Your body is only the tool you use to make the masterpiece of your life, and it doesn’t matter if it looks long or short or thick or very thin or even if it is scratched, as long as you take care of it. “Tell people when they are making you uncomfortable.” Don’t allow yourself to be a victim to other people’s cruelty or stupidity. If people are saying racist things in your presence, sexist things in your presence, if men are heckling you in the street, look them in the eye and tell them, “You are making me uncomfortable.” If that doesn’t work or you don’t feel safe doing it, find solace in the fact that their ignorance is not about you, and it is not your fault but you are going to be an example of something better. Stay in touch with the people you love, and don’t let geography be an excuse. Maintaining a connection will take different forms. Some of my best friends still live in New York. Katie and I text almost every day — usually stupid stuff that matters only to us — while Jen and I exchange heartfelt, poetic emails and news articles about once a month. I might only see these women occasionally, but every time I do, time and distance collapse and I feel like no time has been lost because the whole time we were apart we’ve never stopped talking.
9. There is life after ennui, but you need to find it on your own. This is something I can only say in hindsight. Please pardon the mixed metaphors, but the ennui boulder that crushed me after college — the one I’m just emerging out from under now — was actually an incubator, or even a chrysalis. It’s good to feel lost, to question what you are doing with your life, to self-reflect to the point of nausea. Better too much thought and consideration than charging blindly ahead. Keep your heart open to other people and opportunities, as these are the only things that will help you find your way out. Find ways to continue your schooling, preferably with a group of people who will challenge you and argue with you and play around and make art with you and give you great book recommendations. “House sit if someone asks you to, and take the trash out when you leave.”
10. Never going back to school again will feel just as sweet as you imagined when you were a kid in June. It will be for different reasons, but here’s the main one: you will be able to learn whatever you want at your own pace. It will be frustrating and confounding and sometimes disappointing, and you will often be moved to tears. This will probably be the hardest thing you’ll ever do. But it is also the richest independent study that you can imagine, so take full advantage of everything you can. No one’s handing out grades this time.

Thanks to Sarah Bartley, Clio Brown, Katie Capri, Jason Clearfield, Laura Davis, Melissa Dias-Mandoly, Matt Holden, Kaeli Hood, Jen Lue, Adele Meyer, Maggie Negrete, Hadley Pratt, Mark Sepe, and Megan Vicarel for contributing their words and thoughts to this piece.