Recent grads look at life outside Princeton's gates...
Recent grads look at life outside Princeton's gates...
It's hard to believe that we're already halfway through autumn. Certainly, the things that we usually associate with this time of year have re-established themselves as part of our collective consciousness, among them football season and an influx of (generally bad) new sitcoms on network TV. But now that I've graduated from college, I'm coming to the strange realization that the one aspect of fall that used to matter most to me -- returning to school -- no longer affects my daily experience. This realization hit me with particular force as I was driving to work one morning in early September. Passing through my neighborhood, I spotted several children waiting at the corner for the school bus to carry them to their dreaded destination. It was the first day of the new school year, and etched onto every single one of those kids' faces was the universal look of dejectedness that comes with saying goodbye to three months of freedom. We all know the feeling well -- I felt it with a curious intensity at the beginning of every school year from third grade on.
My sister Lexa commented recently on the weirdness of maintaining a schedule that is no longer governed primarily by the changing seasons. Traditional school calendars being what they are -- forget the torturous year-round school idea -- we have been trained from an early age to equate warm weather with carefree fun and cool weather with study and learning. Most of us adhere to this invariable seasonal pattern for the first twenty-odd years of our lives. Justifiably, then, it takes a while to get used to the fact that after college, things like three-month vacations no longer have any bearing on our lives. Graduate students haven't escaped the season-less way of life, either: as they'll tell you, going to graduate school is a lot like having a full-time job -- and summer vacation is rarely an option.
In effect, our lives have stopped being controlled by an outside force like the weather and have started being controlled by the inside force of our own free will. It's an exciting concept, but it's also kind of frightening: how do you decide what you want to do with your life when there's no longer a master plan? And once you finally make that decision, how do you know that you've made the right one?
Fear of making the wrong decision led to a sort of paralysis on my part during senior year at Princeton. My classmates were busy sending out their resumes and going on interviews; I, on the other hand, was busy doing absolutely nothing, operating in complete denial of my upcoming responsibilities. Several months after graduation, when all my excuses for not working had worn thin, I finally made the choice to pursue a career in art history, which had been my major at school.
Through a combination of luck and connections, I managed to land a couple of museum internships, assisting curators in their research. My topics of study were varied, ranging from Italian Renaissance to contemporary American art; I learned a great deal and worked with interesting people. After several months, however, I began to realize that the field I'd chosen wasn't well suited to me. I'm not really sure why I changed my mind; I just knew, inherently, that I had made the wrong career decision.
My reason for making this wrong choice in the first place is a lot clearer than any explanation I can offer about why things ultimately didn't work out. Basically, I've always had a difficult time adjusting to change, and after graduation I was overwhelmed with the prospect of picking a career. So I chose a job in academia, mainly because school was something to which I was very accustomed. Just as my life had always been dependent upon the weather, so too had it been rooted in some form of academic pursuit. Academia was a known entity, and art history, a field based upon the scholastic principles of research and study, therefore seemed comfortingly familiar to me. As I soon found out, however, familiarity with one's work does not always ensure absolute contentment.
Of course, lots of people return to school or seek a career in academia after graduation, and for them, it's an intelligent choice. I speak only for myself in saying that my decision to rejoin the academic world was ultimately dissatisfactory -- not because of the subject of study itself, but rather for the reason behind my decision making. My choice was based more on an irrational fear of change than on a genuine desire to pursue a profession, and in the end, this reason just wasn't enough to sustain me.
I don't regret my decision, though. In some ways, building a career involves a bit of trial and error: none of us really know for sure if what we're doing is right or wrong until we've spent some time actually doing it. I've recently started a new job, working in production for an interactive agency. The business world is completely new to me, but I don't mind, because I'm finally accepting the fact that a little bit of uncertainty in life is not such a bad thing.
Torie Castiello is a production assistant for Magnet Interactive Communications in Washington, D.C.
Interested in writing for Off the Campus? We're looking for recent Princeton grads ('95-'98) to contribute to this department. Please send samples of your work and a cover letter outlining topics you propose to cover to:
Please include your phone number and e-mail address. We're still deciding how many writers we'll use--a few who will rotate or a new columnist in each issue-- so if you're interested, apply soon! (This page was posted Oct. 8, 1998.)