K: Woo! Ampersand has its first collab! Please welcome my dear friend, Deanna (or “D“) aka the reason I’m staying relatively sane these past couple weeks.

One night while we were FB messaging, we started to discuss how completely bizarre post-grad life is, yet no one wants to talk about it. I don’t care if you have a job or not, being thrown out of college into the semi-real world is ridiculously weird. (D: Especially for those of us that are moving back home for some extended period of time.) So that’s what we’re talking about. Because no one else seems to want to talk about it.

But first, let me introduce you to Deanna. She’s pretty fab.

One word that describes your post-grad life: Balanced?

How much do you miss college (scale of 1-10):  6

What are you most looking forward to in the real world: Not spending Sundays in the library ever again for the rest of my life, thus being able to have a real Sunday dinner (Yes I am in fact Italian)

Biggest fear for the real world: Having to navigate the T in Boston/adjust to city life in general

And I guess here’s a little more about me.

One word that describes your post-grad life: ummmm, yea. (sorry that’s two)

How much do you miss college (scale of 1-10): it fluctuates between 7 and 58.

What are you most looking forward to in the real world: Decorating my own apartment

Biggest fear for the real world: Not making enough money as a journalist to decorate my own apartment

K: We thought the easiest way to chat about post-grad life would be a list of random thoughts.

D: We promise to make you laugh, not cry. 

Enjoy.

10 Random Thoughts about Post-Grad

D:

1) I have so many useless things in my childhood bedroom (ie. Password journal, Walkman, and Hilary duff CDs) that I definitely need to get rid of.

2) And then I need to find someplace to store my American girl doll and because I will one day gift it to my daughter. If I don’t have a daughter in hoping it will be worth big bucks to pay for grad school/a mortgage.

3) I should study for the GMAT every day like I promised myself. Yet, my biggest accomplishment since graduation has been finishing Friends seasons 7-10 on Netflix.

4) While I originally figured I might as well get in shape for the summer/before I start work, I forgot that the student gym membership included in tuition doesn’t exist in the post grad world. And real people gyms are mad expensive.

5) I’m wondering how long I can go around my hometown wearing only athletic clothing. I foresee this as lasting for a significant period of time.

6) I’ve been curious to see how long it takes my middle school sister to remove her bathing suit from the bathtub in our shared bathroom. It’s been 1.5 weeks so far.

7) I’ll need to make some sort of schedule/color-coded excel sheet so I know when all of my friends start working and thus leave me to crappy daytime TV/Pinterest.

8 ) It’s still a mystery as to the furthest I can drive on a road trip without stopping at a rest stop as I have an irrational fear of rest stops. My record is 4 hours.

9) I’ve started doing my laundry twice a week just so I have something productive I can do when my parents are home. It creates the illusion that I’m a semi-functioning adult.

10) Trying to explain what quinoa was to my father at a family BBQ was harder than any of my second semester senior year final exams.

K:

1) I absolutely dread the “what are you doing” question, so I’ve been avoiding my town’s Starbucks at all costs (I know right. I’m also shocked) However, I started getting withdrawal symptoms (#basicbitchproblems), so I went at 8am when I knew that only middle-aged women in book clubs would be there.

2) I purged my room of all the middle school crap (didn’t find my Hilary Duff CD though, damnit) but I did stumble upon my 5th grade diary. I was more awkward than I remembered. Cringing.

3) Currently, I hold a part-time position as a barista in a Barnes & Noble cafe. I can’t decide if this is a dream come true or a horrible, horrible decision.

4) My social life consists of watching the Bachelorette on Mondays with my mom and making small talk with cashiers at the grocery store. What I wouldn’t give for a crowded Kelly’s on a Thursday night.

5) Part of me wants to run away to Europe and avoid this awkward post-grad mess. I looked up plane tickets yesterday.

6) Good thing about post grad: I have time to DIY super fun Pinterest-y things! Bad thing about post grad: I’m TERRIBLE at DIY Pinterest-y things.

7) For my remote internship, I decided to actually get dressed every morning even though I’m literally in my house all day. That lasted for approximately 3 days until it dissolved into me wearing leggings and ratty t-shirts instead.

8) My parents seem more concerned about my life now  when they can literally see me every day, living & breathing vs. when I called them about once a week and they didn’t really know if I was alive or not day to day.

9) The job search goes like this: One day I’ll spend 5 hours on LinkedIn, crazily sending out resumes and the rest of the time, I convince myself that it’s okay to marry for money instead of love. I’ve yet to find a happy medium.

10) The amount of doctor/dentist/dermatologist appointments I have scheduled is absurd. It’s like being a postgrad means you actually have to start taking care of yourself.

D: While we can’t help but think about what’s coming next, where we’ll be working, how to decorate our apartments, etc., there are some good things about post grad. If we don’t have a job yet or have some time before starting work, we should be enjoying the last summer break we’ll have for the foreseeable future. Visit friends. Go to concerts. Anything at all-just embrace this responsibility-free time. If we’re home with our families, we get to enjoy Mom’s cooking and Dad’s corny jokes for a few more months before leaving our childhood homes. Bottom line, is college may have been a great four years but the it was by no means the best of our lives, that chapter is still unwritten.

K: ^Deanna is way more inspirational than I am haha She’ll probably be back to give some more random thoughts & wise words.

And on that note…thus concludes Ampersand’s first collab! Hope you laughed a little bit and enjoyed another voice besides my own. If you want to be featured on Ampersand (and basically become ~*famous*~), let me know! Writing is always more fun when I get to share it with someone else.