I Graduated Three Weeks Ago and I Feel Weirdly Empty
I’m sitting on my couch right now, leftover garlic bread from last night’s takeout congealing on the coffee table, my graduation cap propped against the TV stand where I’ve left it since the ceremony. I meant to hang it on the wall above my desk last weekend, bought a little nail and everything, but I never got around to it. Can’t seem to get around to much of anything lately, not the way everyone says I should.
Yesterday I woke up at 7:45, threw on my favorite wrinkled hoodie, brushed my teeth, and started walking toward the humanities building before I remembered. I stopped dead in the middle of the crosswalk, a biker swerved around me yelling, and I just stood there squinting at the sidewalk like I’d forgotten how to get anywhere else. For four years, that walk was muscle memory. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8am, 10 minutes from my old off-campus house, stop for a coffee on the way, complain about the 8am start time with the girl who sat next me. Now there’s no 8am class. There’s no girl sitting next to me. She moved to Portland two days after graduation, and we’ve texted twice.
I posted all the right photos after the ceremony, you know? Smiling with my parents, hugging my friends, tassel moved to the left side, caption that said “on to the next :)” Everyone liked it, everyone commented how proud they were, what an exciting time this is. And it was exciting, for a week. We partied, we cried, we took a million photos, I ate way too much dry graduation cake. But then everyone left. My parents drove back home, my roommates packed their cars and disappeared to different states, and suddenly I was here alone in this tiny 1-bed apartment I rented back in March because I thought it’d be so cool to have my own place after graduation.
The fridge still has half a jar of dill pickles my old roommate left behind. She texted the group chat two weeks ago saying she’d come grab it when she was in town, but no one’s heard from her since. I don’t throw it away. I just stare at it when I’m grabbing a soda, like it’s a little piece of the old life that’s still here, I guess. My phone calendar still has all the old reminders: final paper due May 8, graduation practice May 12, group dinner after ceremony May 13. I haven’t deleted any of them. It feels wrong, somehow, like clicking delete would erase the whole four years, not just a calendar alert.
Everyone says this is supposed to be the best time of my life. All the relatives at the graduation cookout, all the thinkpieces online, say that. My aunt texted me yesterday asking how the job hunt was going, any exciting leads? I texted back “it’s going great, lots of applications out!” even though I’ve sent three in two weeks. I spent all last Tuesday sorting my sock drawer by color because opening my laptop to look at job listings made my chest feel tight. It’s not that I don’t want a job. I do. I just… don’t have the built-in deadline pushing me anymore. For four years, every step was planned out for you: take this class this semester, do this internship this summer, check this box to graduate. Now the only box is “be a person” and it’s way bigger than I expected.
Last night I walked around campus just because I didn’t have anything else to do. I don’t have a reason to go there anymore, not really. The quad was full of students studying for summer classes, throwing a frisbee around, and I felt like a ghost. Like I didn’t belong there anymore, but I didn’t really belong anywhere else yet either. I stopped at the campus convenience store for an iced coffee, same as I did every Friday after my last class. The kid working the register didn’t ask me for my student ID, and I didn’t remind him. Just paid the extra two dollars and walked out, holding the cold cup in my hand.
The weird thing is, I wanted this. I complained for four years about how ready I was to graduate. I complained about my terrible 8am professor who graded papers like he was trying to make everyone cry, I complained about the dorm showers that were always cold, I complained about having to buy a $200 textbook for a class I didn’t even want to take. I couldn’t wait to be done, to not have to take another exam ever again, to have my own space where I didn’t have to hear my roommate’s TV through the wall at 2am. I got the thing I wanted, and it’s empty. That’s the contradiction no one tells you about.
It’s not that I’m sad, not really. It’s not that I need a therapist to fix it, it’s just… empty. Like when you finish a really good TV show and you sit through the credits and you don’t know what to do with yourself next, except this is bigger than a TV show. This is the whole first chapter of your adult life that you spent four years building up to, and now it’s over, and the next chapter hasn’t started yet. Everyone talks about post-grad blues like it’s this thing you fix with a job and a new routine, and maybe it will be, eventually. But right now, it just is. I don’t need anyone to tell me it gets better. I know it probably does. I just wish someone would have told me it could feel like this first.
This morning I sat on my fire escape drinking coffee, and I didn’t check my email, I didn’t open LinkedIn, I just watched people walk by on their way to work. For a little while, the emptiness didn’t feel like a flaw I needed to fix. It just felt like quiet. But most days, it still feels empty. My tassel is still hanging off my rearview mirror, blocking a tiny sliver of the road when I drive. I still have half a graduation cookie in my freezer, wrapped in tin foil. I still sometimes turn toward the lecture hall when I’m not paying attention. I don’t know when that’ll stop. And that’s okay, I guess. For now, that’s just where I am.
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