Uneventful. Predictable. Boring.
Those are perhaps the last words I'd use to describe my 22nd year.
I... spent my last two months of college living la vida BEST EVER. Thought-provoking classes that had me rarin' to go out and do something in this world, spring afternoons spent lounging in fountains, chilly nights sipping wine, feet away from the most brilliant, passionate people I've ever met. It was the best way to end the best four years, and I knew it too - it was how I found myself bawling at the New Girl season finale screaming "BUT WHY DOES EVERYTHING GOOD HAVE TO END" as Cassandra gently patted my back saying, "New Girl will come back in like five months, okay?"
I... graduated from Stanford, although I still need to do something with my diploma like give it to my parents or hang it up. Currently, it's been used as both a mousepad and a coaster. Mom, you did not read that.
I... spent the summer roaming Europe, revisiting beloved cities like Oxford and London and Paris and Rome, making new memories in others like Florence and Venice and Naples and oh yeah, getting my whole perspective shifted in Croatia and Bosnia, and THEN the cherry on top – Greece.
I... came home with nary a plan. No apartment, no job, no idea what I wanted in a next step. A couple of months were spent digging my head deeper and deeper into the sand as I crashed on a friend's couch and desperately called every connection offered to me and went on interviews, intent on finding not any position but the right one, and dealt with the impending doom of finding an apartment in San Francisco. I spent quite a few full days in bed, snuggling with misery and uncertainty and self-doubt.
But then I watched as the puzzle pieces all came together and I first found an incredible apartment, then my self-confidence, and then a job that seemingly was a result of stars aligning. I forged forward, learning everything and anything I possibly could about my professional strengths and weaknesses, befriended coworkers, changed roles, grappled with the harder realities of a 9-to-5 (namely: the commute, a monotonous schedule M-F, no midday naps), and enjoyed the finer aspects too (such as: getting to be a part of something super exciting and rewarding, puppies in the office, y'know).
