Jasmine: Fall 2018
Class of 2017, Jasmine moved to Connecticut after graduation to work in an engineering firm (one of our few friends with an engineering degree who stayed in engineering)
Health: 8/10
Overall health wise not horrible, but I don’t think I’m as healthy as I could be. I have real problems with portion control because I love food. I think I can stand to lose 10 lb of fat and gain some muscle. I can still do really hard all day hikes, but I’ve gone hiking a lot less this year because I have more friends than last year and don’t have as much free time to go hike by myself. Any exercise to do with nature is my sweet spot.
I signed up for a 5K, but then I came to Montreal for work so I got out of that one. I could sleep more too, my average sleep time right now is 1 am and really, what am I doing that I can’t sleep earlier? I’m sure if I slept longer my immune system would be stronger.
I’ve never been religious, and I don’t really believe in anything supernatural. I usually think of spiritual as how can I connect to the world. Part of the whole nature thing is spiritual for me — going outside, going hiking, looking up at the sky (I love clouds, and stars). I feel spiritual enough to be happy, but I can do better in terms of more reflection and more writing. I journal to keep in touch with myself and I haven’t done that in a couple of weeks.
My mental health is good, I’m a little bit more stressed at this job than my last one but it’s a good kind of stress. It helps that I don’t take my work personally, and I don’t take responsibility for work in the same way that a lot of my peers do. For me it’s a vehicle to do other things.
Work: 6/10
In terms of work, I’m not very ambitious. The way that I see it, as long as I am above the curve or not outside of one standard deviation from the average, I’m okay. I never aimed for anything at higher than a B+ after freshman year — to me it’s diminishing returns. I got a lot more fulfillment and enjoyment from connections outside of work.
I do feel a lot more empowered in the workforce now than I did a year ago. I never had any engineering internships before starting this job, so there were a lot of things that took me some time to learn and figure out, like email etiquette, how to work with older folks, how to work with 90% boys. Now I feel pretty comfortable in the company, and I have a certain amount of credibility that I can work with, and I feel okay asking stupid questions. I know what I should know and shouldn’t know.
If I counted all of the side projects that I said I would do when I graduated them I would rate side projects as a zero. I wanted to learn French, learn sign language, work on my Chinese, write more, and sing. All of those things I said I would do, but I never really worked on. Half of it is because I set those goals before I started working, and I didn’t imagine I would have as vibrant of a social life. The other half is not getting to get habits in terms of being productive.
Play: 10/10
I have such a good community around. My friends are very fun, and very wholesome. In my groups there are a lot of different people I can lean on for different common interests — some people to cook with, some I can travel with, some to sleep over and have heart-to-hearts. My priority is on my friend community and my extracurriculars, which kind of explains why my work is lower.
Love: 9/10
I stay in touch with my out of town friends through a call rotation, and that works out great. Love with my parents is pretty constant, maybe I could stand to give more — my family is not very communicative in terms of keeping touch long distance. It was never a requirement of ours and my parents aren’t the naggy type, so sometimes my mom and I would go a month without talking on the phone. Maybe I’m trying to say that I should be better to them in general, but as it stands they don’t feel a lack of love from me. My mom reaches out when she needs me and I do the same. My brother and I keep in touch better than most siblings.
I was talking to my dad about going home for Labor Day so we can spend some time together and go crabbing, but when he found out that I would only be staying the weekend, he was very practical and told me not to come. In a sense he knows that I’m coming home not so much because I miss him, but because I feel like I should.
For self-love, I love myself a lot, but in terms of self-pampering, I can treat my body better. I give and I get a lot of love for my significant other.
Let me contextualize this
This is one candid snapshot from a chronicle of a few people’s post-graduate journeys. Some of us graduated Class of 2017. Others, a few years out. Each of us are on an unmapped journey to somewhere, optimistic that the dots will somehow connect in the future.
My hope to you is that when you follow along with our stories you will find comfort in the intentional randomness of life, and find courage in your own seemingly “monumentous” decisions.
The format will be simple — every four months, I will ask each post-grad to gauge 4 areas of their life (as inspired by the highly recommended book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans):
- Health (physical, mental, spiritual)
- Work (9–5, side projects)
- Play (things you do purely for fun)
- Love (from you and to you)
