Congratulations.
It’s over.
Don’t panic.
You made it through these past four years, plus or minus a few and a half.
You probably counted down the days, maybe you’ve been counting since High School began. You’ve imagined this year, said the number over and over in your mind a million times. I bet when we flipped the calendars this January, you said to yourself, “This is it. This is the year I graduate college.”
Maybe you already have those four numbers written in ink on your wall, in a book, on your skin. The string of them somehow belongs to you, always has, always will. This is your year.
You made it.
Don’t panic.
So you walk the stage and extend your hand to take hold of everything the last four years have meant, neatly rolled or folded, tucked away not in shame but pride.
It bears your name. Do you recognize it? They’ve only called you that for the past twenty years. You heard it just now - it ushered you across the stage, told your feet to move.
Does it mean the same as it did when you started?
Maybe your slip of paper has a title, has a category, has honor. Maybe it just has some initials.
Those letters carry the weight of a world or two - nights past spent bent over ink and wood, days future spent bent over numbers and lines and makings of a vocation.
You’ve been bent, and you’ll keep bending.
Don’t break.
Don’t panic.
There’s a scene, a party.
Pictures are taken, posted, smiles locked forever beneath a crooked cap.
This is worth celebrating.
You did what they told you to do. You did what you always swore you would. You’ve earned this moment.
Maybe there’s a string of moments, a trip, a whole week of celebration. Enjoy every last drop. Drink of the exhilaration, the freedom. This is your year, after all.
And then close your eyes. You’re going to at the end of the night anyway.
Close them tight. And sleep.
Maybe this is the first good sleep in four years.
Wake up.
Don’t panic.
There’s a time when the celebration wears off, when you stop dreaming because they’ve all come true, when the sleep doesn’t mean what it used to, and you can’t remember why you wanted this in the first place.
You’ll wish for the busyness and the studying and the long nights if it means you can have purpose again, if you can live with your friends in that place again, if you can hear people tell you who you are and what you’re worth again.
Freedom isn’t ever what you think it is.
There’s always a price, always a cost, always a want for old yokes and stale burdens.
Freedom can’t live without fences.
Where will you build them?
You have choices to make.
Don’t panic.
You are the clock maker.
You choose where the time goes, what you will do with it, when it will start and when it will end.
No one is deciding for you anymore.
On your mark.
Set the alarm. Set the goals. Set the scene.
Go.
Don’t forget to go.
Don’t panic.
What’s wrong?
Are you disappointed?
Is this part not what you thought it would be? Don’t tell me. Did the world let you down again? It can’t be the first time.
Where is your ring? Where is the security?
Where are the things you were promised?
The conveyor belt stops here. Didn’t anyone tell you?
You’re on your own now.
But you have us.
Don’t panic.
We are the forerunners.
We have stood where you’re standing.
We are here to tell you not that it gets better, but that it gets different.
We learned the secret no one else would tell us:
College isn’t the best time of your life.
No, these are the glory days -
The Mondays you choose to show up, like it means something.
The Tuesdays that make up for yesterdays.
The Wednesdays you learn to make peace with.
The Thursdays that turn into Fridays that turn into weekends that turn into memories, and suddenly you’re going and you’re living and you know it’s okay.
Because it is okay.
It’s okay.
Don’t panic.
Years pass, and you look at the wall where that slip of paper hangs.
Maybe you are everything it says you are, and maybe you’ve changed.
Maybe you’ve gotten a new name, added some letters, gotten a few more medals of honor.
Wherever you are, you’ve made choices.
You’ve made it up as you’ve gone because that’s all we ever do.
And now when you close your eyes, there are new dreams that no one ever told you that you could have at your age.
And age, you’ll learn, might just be a number after all.
And after all you’ve learned and seen and done, you will choose whether you’re happy or not.
No one has it figured out. No one has everything they’ve ever wanted.
We only have each other. We only have these glory days.
We only have the rest of our lives.
This is the rest of your life.
This is postgrad.
Don’t panic.