It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking you’ve got “it” when you’re so busy that each day slides by in a swirl of homework and exams. When there’s a clear path laid before you, with structured credits and definite milestones, you can fool yourself into living and growing by the academic metric alone. Some are intelligent enough to see beyond the schedule and grow; others, such as myself, blindly follow the rigmarole.

So, blithely, I emerged from the snow-blindness of endless textbooks and assignments, thinking I had some grasp of things. The real world, without explicit benchmarks and frighteningly lacking in guideposts and waypoints, is a much much messier place than college.

This is not to say that 9 months out of college have helped me reach some epiphany. No, I make no such grand assertions. The time has, however, allowed the veil to lift and afforded me invaluable perspective. Diving back into the structure of professional school this coming August, I must realize I do not yet have an understanding of the world but of the world’s messiness.

After all, the fabric that weaves our lives in and out of people and places is not staid or predictable but a messy, complex, intricate, ethereal, transient, gossamer thing. A beautiful thing.

• Life questions
• College

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