Minor Differences in College Life versus Post-Graduate Life

I’m currently working on a post that’s actually substantial, but in the meantime….Lately I’ve been noticing that there are certain things that used to be a normal part of my life in college that are almost completely absent from my life after graduation. Conversely, there are things in my post-graduate life that were never part of my life in college. I’m not talking about big things. Obviously, I don’t go to class every day anymore and I didn’t get a paycheck at the end of every month in college. No, I’m talking about little things like:

1.) YouTube. When I was in school, I spent so much time on YouTube. It was a convenient means of wasting time when I should have been working on papers. Now, the time that I spend tethered to a computer is in an office, where my co-workers and boss could see and hear what I was doing if I started watching videos every half hour. So, I’m really not on YouTube very much anymore, and I’m completely clueless about this whole Harlem Shake phenomenon. (It makes me feel old.)

2.) Walking. I’m willing to bet that I still walk more than the average American since I don’t have my own car. However, when I was a student, walking was built into my day. The longest amount of time I’d spend sitting would be in four-hour seminars, but after the seminar was over, I’d have to stand up and walk home or to the library or to my next class. Now, I spend eight hour days sitting at a desk and I don’t have an excuse to get up and walk around regularly. It’s tough to get used to and my back doesn’t like it much. (And we wonder why Americans have so many health problems.)

3.) Conversations about old-people things. Yesterday, I had a chat with my dad about what exactly a 401(3)b–the non-profit version of a 401(k)–is, under what circumstances you can tap into it, why you need alternative savings as well, and what happens to it if you lose or change your job. I’m very grateful that I have parents who are willing to explain this stuff to me and give me financial advice, but retirement was an issue that never, ever crossed my mind when I was in college.

4.) Feeling dumb. Occasionally I’ll see something on a blog or in the news and it will call up vague memories of something I learned in school that I just can’t remember anymore. Just today I was reading a book on politics that briefly referenced the sociologist Marcuse. I can recall a time when I read some of Marcuse’s work and feverishly crammed notes about him for a test, but for the life of me, I can’t tell you anymore who he was or why he’s important. (I can, however, describe in great detail the couch I was sitting on while doing the cramming. It’s odd what the brain remembers and forgets.) When these instances come up, I feel really dumb–like I should know something that I’ve forgotten. (I also wonder why knowing it at the time seemed so incredibly important, and if it really was so important, why don’t I remember it now?)

5.) New priorities. Of course, learning doesn’t stop just because someone is no longer in school. I now know tons of things about grant writing, fundraising, types of nonprofit designations and what they mean, how to create a social media campaign, and the weird and confusing world of government contracts and subcontracts. These are all things no one ever taught me in school, but they’re things I’ve either picked up interning in the nonprofit world or had to go out and learn myself. So, maybe it’s not that I’m dumb, but the topics I’m interested in learning and my priorities about what I’m learning have definitely changed.

Obviously, when I graduated and entered “the real world” I expected a lot of things to change. These are just some of the minor changes that I either hadn’t expected or hadn’t really thought about until now. It’s strange to think that I’ve been out of school for almost a year now, but in many ways, I’m still thinking of myself in relation to college. Being a student has consumed my identity for most of my life, and while I’d say I’m doing fairly well outside of academia, it’s like that identity hasn’t fully updated yet.

I Have a Job! …Sort Of…

The reason why I’ve been neglecting my promise to myself to blog regularly is because I have a job! …Sort of. I have an internship with a nonprofit, and it includes a stipend. (Unheard of in the nonprofit world!) I’ve been doing grant writing, which has kept me very busy. I’ve also still been job searching. I keep meaning to blog, and I’m still certainly writing on my own time, but I just haven’t gotten around to posting things.

Some Thoughts on Job Searching

So, on a personal note, I’ve been job searching this summer. I had a temporary retail position, but I’ve had to quit that since my lease is up soon and unless something pans out, it looks like I’m going to be moving in with my parents at the end of the month. I’m really not happy about that. Don’t get me wrong, my parents are great people, and through their influence I became the inquisitive, thoughtful critical thinker that I am today (even if it didn’t quite turn out the way they expected). I had just hoped that once I graduated and finished school, I’d be able to live on my own, pay for my own things, and generally be independent.

One of the many problems with job searching is that it requires a lot of introspection. I write an individual cover letter for every job I apply for, which means that for each job, I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes me qualified, what experiences I’ve had that I can bring to the job, and why my background makes me a good fit for this organization or that company. I find myself second-guessing my past a lot. Should I have bothered with a Master’s degree? With only a couple exceptions, the jobs that I’m looking at and am qualified for don’t require one. The Master’s seemed like a good idea at the time…(This was when I really thought I wanted to teach English at the college level and stay in school forever. Graduate school quickly cured me of that.) I also second-guess my internships. Yes, they lead me to realizing that I want to go into non-profit communications and, yes, they are better than no job experience on my resume at all. But they were both with very niche organizations that espouse ideological values that, to some, could be controversial. Okay, I interned with feminist and atheist—erherm, “secular humanist”—organizations. In many ways, I don’t regret these internships because I loved working for them, met some amazing people, and had some wonderful (and practical) experiences. But I do wonder if I should’ve done something safe (and maybe paid?) and less controversial. It was a little awkward when I realized I was applying for a communications position at a Catholic university and nearly all of my writing samples are pro-LGBT rights or pro-abortion. (I didn’t get that job. No surprises there.) I’ve always prided myself as someone who stays true to her values, holds out for the best that she can get, and doesn’t take the easy road. But it was a lot easier to be that sort of person when I was in school, which I’m realizing is a very controlled environment that has little bearing on life in the real world, and when I didn’t have health problems to worry about.

This introspection has also made me realize that as I applied for and worked in these internship positions, and pretty much every job I’ve ever had, I kind of fell into them without really understanding what I was getting into. When I applied to intern with a feminist non-profit in Washington, D.C., I didn’t think, “This is an experience that will build a foundation for my future career goals!” I thought, “Everyone else is doing summer internships. I should do a summer internship. Ooo! Feminism and writing! I like those! I’ll apply for that!” The internship with the secular humanist organization was a bit more calculated. It was a a resume builder and fall-back in the event that I didn’t get a paid summer job. But I still didn’t really see it as something that would affect my future. I think I had this attitude because, at the time, I saw myself as a student. In the end, I figured, the internships would be over in August and I would go back to school. School was what I focused on most. Now I’m realizing that, in terms of jobs experience, the portfolio that I built with these organizations matters much, much more than my degrees.

Ultimately, because of that portfolio, I really don’t regret my internships. I also don’t regret them because they were experiences in which I grew not only intellectually but also personally and emotionally. Sure, I wasn’t getting paid, but the intrinsic value that comes from working on projects that I felt excited about, from not just feeling but knowing that I was making the world a better place, and from meeting people that shared my interests and passion more than made up for the dent in my back account. (And, yes, I realize that I was privileged to be able to spend my summers working for free. I’m not denying that I got where I am today at least in part because of that privilege. And one of the reasons why I want to work with non-profits is so that I can extend that privilege to the many, many people who deserve but don’t have access to opportunities that people like me have.) At the time, even though I didn’t fully understand how those internships would play out, I’m ultimately glad that I did them.

And now I have two upcoming interviews, and in my over-thinking fashion, I’m wondering how they’re going to pan out and what that will mean for my future, because at this point, I don’t have school waiting for me at the end of the summer. Both of the interviews are with non-profits whose missions I care about. One is in a city about six hours away from where I currently live, doesn’t pay well even for non-profits, but does offer full benefits. Though I’ve spent the past year whining about how much I can’t stand my current location, as I’m starting to think seriously about moving, I’m kind of bulking at the prospect. I wouldn’t know anyone and I’m not sure what I’d do if my carpal tunnel flares up before my health benefits kick in. On the other hand, this is the best job I’ve had a shot at so far. The second interview is for a paid, part-time internship position. Even if I got a second job, I’d still probably have to live with my parents, a prospect I’m not thrilled with. However, it would only be until the end of the year, by which point, I’d hopefully have had a chance to network with other non-profits and maybe, maybe land a full time job. Also, hopefully, by then I’d have this damned carpal tunnel sorted out and in the meantime, I’d still be close to my doctor and physical therapist. I’m realizing that, however this situation plays out, I’m probably going to just fall into something again without fully realizing the consequences until it’s too late to back out.

I’m trying to convince myself that it’s okay not to know what the future holds. All I can ask of myself is that I make the best decision I can with the information that I have right now. (And to calm down, because I haven’t even been offered either of these positions yet! I’m just being interviewed!) I’ve fallen into things in the past—undergrad, jobs, internships, grad school—and overall I’m happy with the way they turned out and how I dealt with them. The same thing will happen in my current job situation. I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason or that there is some cosmic greater plan. I do, however, believe that we ourselves give a reason and a meaning to everything that happens. I’ve managed to give meaning to many of my past experiences, like my internships. However, I have other past experiences, like going to graduate school, that I regret. (Maybe in a few years, when I have more perspective on it, I won’t regret it. Who knows?) Right now, I’m hoping that however my job search turns out, I end up with more meaning than regrets.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that life is unpredictable, and while I know that, sometimes it’s hard to come to terms with, especially when I’m used to being in school, where everything has a nice, easy rubric to follow and results are guaranteed. On a more theory-related note, I watched my first Quentin Tarantino film this weekend and I have some thoughts on it. I’ve also read a serious, academic book related to current political and social issues. So, stay tuned for more serious posts coming later this week!

With the Slightest Little Effort of His Ghost-Like Charms: Identity and the Appeal of Jack Skellington and The Nightmare before Christmas

The Florida sun shone off the pale yellow and pink pastels of the hotel walls. Samantha, Joe, [not their real names] and I sat on the curb while leaning against our luggage and instrument cases. Despite the brilliant, white sunshine and the heavy humidity, we were all dressed head to toe in black. The last hold-outs of the Goth craze of the early 2000s, we each sported thick, black eyeliner, black t-shirts, black jeans, and black boots. Samantha was also wearing a lacey, black tutu over her pants, which must have been warm but looked fetching on her petite frame.

Joe yawned. “When is the bus supposed to get here?”

I glanced at my watch. “About fifteen minutes ago.” We were on our way back to that conformist institution called high school from a marching band trip to Disney World. There we were misfits and band geeks, weird in our penchant for black nail polish and obscure music. But here on the curb, even in the brightness of the Florida sun, we fit in with each other, a black murder of crows amongst gaggles of white swans.

Samantha yawned too and pulled a pillow out of her backpack. It was white and round and covered in fleece, thick black yarn stitches slashed through the middle and two large black, familiar eyes stared up at us.

“Oooo! That’s awesome!” I squealed with delight.

“Jack! Jack! Give me Jack!” Joe shouted as soon as he saw the pillow. He snatched it from Samantha and hugged the plush face of Jack Skellington, Tim Burton’s anti-hero of The Nightmare before Christmas, that icon of angsty, Goth high schoolers and Hot Topic posers.

“Give it back!” Samantha whined. She reached for the pillow and then playfully slapped Joe when he held it out of her reach.

“Hey!” he barked and then grudgingly returned the cushion.

“My Jack!” Samantha said, holding it against her chest, over her heart.

* * *

What is it about Jack Skellington, about Nightmare before Christmas, that so appeals to teenagers, especially those who take to wearing black and listening to heavy metal or alternative rock music alone in their rooms? It’s been almost twenty years since the movie came out, and yet I still see that cartoon skeleton face nearly everywhere—usually in malls and usually around Halloween and Christmas. Many children’s movies have not been nearly as resilient and many of them certainly haven’t appealed so heavily to the teen market. Even more haven’t stuck with me personally, but Nightmare before Christmas has. Even in my twenties, I have a Jack Skellington poster in my apartment. I own a Jack Skellington tote bag. I even decorate my Christmas tree with Nightmare decorations and two of my favorite t-shirts feature screen-prints of Jack and Sally. What about this quirky movie keeps it coming back every Christmas? Why are teenagers, some probably born after the movie came out, still drawn to Jack’s eerie smile? And why can’t I, even after I’ve long left Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny behind, give up on Jack Skellington?

For those of you who missed out on Tim Burton’s dark fairy tale, I’ll give you a summary: The premise of The Nightmare before Christmas is that each major holiday—Halloween, Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving—is created in a magical town. Halloween, naturally, is created in Halloween Town, a village made up of twisted castles and crumbing walls and inhabited by vampires, an evil scientist, werewolves, and a whole host of other ghouls and goblins. Despite their macabre appearance, the inhabitants of Halloween Town are friendly, helpful folk. They just have an aesthetic that inverts our own. Skulls and rotting hands are beautiful while snowflakes and Christmas trees are ugly. While Halloween Town is officially run by a mayor, the real boss in town is the local celebrity, Jack Skellington the Pumpkin King, the scariest monster in the world. Jack, seemingly, has it all—a castle home, good friends, and adoring fans. But he’s bored. He feels stuck in a rut, doing the same thing year after year. So one night, after the town’s usual Halloween festivities, he takes a walk through an enchanted forest and finds the magic doors to the other holiday towns. He stumbles into Christmas Town, inhabited by efficient and ever-smiling elves and, of course, Santa Claus, and is amazed. He decides to bring the joy of Christmas to Halloween Town, but the fiends and phantoms just can’t wrap their heads around the concept of Christmas. So Jack modifies the holiday into a morbid parody of Yuletide. The well-meaning but misguided residents of Halloween Town decide to bring their version of Christmas to the world, so they kidnap Santa Claus and Jack takes off in a coffin-shaped sleigh pulled by eight skeleton reindeer to deliver presents of dead rats and giant snakes (all wrapped in black paper and topped with festive black bows) to terrified little girls and boys. The National Guard eventually shoots down Jack’s sleigh, and he realizes that he’s made a terrible mistake. He isn’t meant to be Santa Claus—he’s the Pumpkin King, destined to give people a good scare on Halloween! He rushes back to Halloween Town and sets Santa Claus free. Christmas is restored to its usual cheeriness, and Jack has a renewed sense of who he’s meant to be and what his purpose is. He goes back to his patch of jack-o’-lanterns and his town full of ghosts, knowing that that is where he belongs.

To really understand the appeal of this movie to a certain subset of people, especially teenaged people, I think it’s worth comparing Halloween and Christmas in our culture. Halloween is a dark holiday, a holiday to playfully face our fears and find out that they maybe aren’t that scary. It’s also a holiday to explore our identities. We try on new clothes, new costumes, and new personas. It’s a time when it’s socially acceptable for “good girls” to look promiscuous, normally polite and well-mannered children can indulge their love of sweets, and teenagers and college students can pull pranks across the neighborhood. Halloween is about celebrating the Others of our culture, whether those others are the scary misfits, creepy monsters, or our own secret fears and identities. Christmas, conversely, is a holiday that invokes and virtues of generosity and good will. It’s about spending time with family, eating good food, giving and receiving presents, and basking in the warmth of companionship in the depths of winter. It’s a holiday upon which we’re supposed to be jolly. If Halloween is about facing the parts of ourselves we usually keep hidden, Christmas is about putting on a front of our happiest, most idealized selves.

But what if your idealized self isn’t what your family or your culture tell you you’re supposed to idealize? Or what if you just can’t stand pretending to be cheerful when you really feel anxious and sad? Or what if you just want to be honest about those dark, hidden parts of yourself that you’re told you’re supposed to keep secret? As a teenager, I felt like that, and I know I’m not the only one. In high school, I watched the popular girls cake on the newest eye shadows and mascaras featured in Vogue.  I overheard them talk about the latest diets and weight loss regimes mentioned in Cosmo. I saw them sashay into class wearing designer jeans sported by major actresses. And they were smiling, always smiling! They told the teachers what they wanted to hear and they told their boyfriends what they wanted to hear. To me, it all seemed so fake, like they were wearing a mask, a costume.

With my black clothes and eyeliner, I was wearing a costume too, but at least I felt that my costume was of my own making. I wore it to please myself and no one else. I was, in my own eyes, a rebel. Instead of designer clothes, I wore thrifted outfits. Instead of memorizing the lyrics to the latest pop songs, I memorized the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe. My friends and I flaunted our difference. We felt sad inside, so we wore our sadness outside. We felt like the world of popular, pretty people had rejected us, so we rejected the world of the popular, pretty people. What they thought was ugly was beautiful to us, and we found beauty in the dark, secret places that everyone told us were ugly.

Of course, a great deal of this rebellion was, at least on my part, based in jealousy. I’d be willing to bet that a lot of other teenagers also harbor a similar resentment to the popular people, the pretty people, the people-pleasing people. For whatever reason, they seemed to have what we didn’t, whether it was in conventionally attractive looks, better social skills, or just the stamina to repress what they were really thinking and mold themselves into whatever they needed to be in a given situation. Other people liked them. Looking back now, I realize that these popular kids probably felt as sad and lost as I did. They were just better at throwing up a front of confidence. They faked it till they made it. I, for a variety of reasons—depression, anxiety, and probably just plain stubbornness—couldn’t do that. So I proudly wore my difference in fishnets and Converse while a tiny part of me wished that I could be pretty and popular. Like Jack Skellington, I fit well in ghastly, gruesome settings, but sometimes I grew weary of being a misfit, an outsider, a monster.

As I mentioned, I’m sure I wasn’t the only teenager to feel this way. High school is indeed a strange period in life. You have a child’s impulsiveness but you’re morphing into an adult’s body. You’re being given adult responsibilities—driving, getting your first job, considering college or trade school or the military—but you still live with your parents and are expected to obey their rules. You’re starting to form your own opinions about important topics like politics and religion but you still giggle when somebody accidentally farts or burps in class. You’re told that these are the best years of your life, but you spend a lot of time feeling stressed out about classes and directionless when you think of your future. If I may over-simplify: in a sense, high school is full of a bunch of people who haven’t quite figured out yet who they are. So some of them learn to pretend that they’ve figured it all out, while others learn to revel in their awkwardness. The pretenders are like Christmas. They seem cheerful and virtuous and get their validation from pleasing the people around them and fitting in. The revelers are like Halloween. They try on a bunch of different personas, usually personas that invert cultural norms and values. They get their validation from shocking people, from defining themselves as outsiders.

And this brings me back to the appeal of The Nightmare before Christmas and its protagonist, Jack Skellington. Jack, like so many teenagers, including my friends and me, is a monster, an outsider, a misfit. He’s a celebrity on Halloween and in Halloween Town, but to the rest of the world, and certainly in a cheery place like Christmas Town, he’s a creepy skeleton, a symbol of death and darkness. Also like my friends and I, and many other teenagers, Jack enjoys his difference. It makes him special. And while it might scare normal people, his difference is what makes his friends adore him. But difference can still be lonely and tiring, and like Jack, sometimes a lot of us outsiders just want to be normal and happy, like everyone else. So Jack does, for a little while, become like everyone else. In a place where Halloween is normal, Christmas becomes like Halloween—a chance for Jack to try out other, hidden parts of his identity. Instead of being macabre, he gets to be jolly. But instead of transforming Jack from a beast to a prince, as so many fairy tales do, The Nightmare before Christmas affirms Jack’s difference. It makes him realize that he is a monster and that being a monster is, for him, a good thing. Watching Jack’s transformation into Santa Claus and then back into the Pumpkin King allowed me, and I suspect still allows a lot of teenagers, to feel affirmed in our own weirdness. We might want to be like the always happy elves or always happy popular people, but we, like Jack, knew that that wasn’t who we really were.

Of course, we’re all different from everyone else in some way, but high school is a time when many people feel pressured to put on a front of happiness and conformity. And a lot of people, like my teenage self, feel uncomfortable with that front. While we’re often told that we’re just going through a phase or we’ll grow out of our discomfort, some of us build out identities on our rebellion, our difference. We don’t want to give it up. We don’t want to be told that we’ll blossom into princes or princesses, even though we might be frogs now. The Nightmare before Christmas is a fairy tale that says otherwise. It tells us that even if we try to be what everyone else wants and expects, that’s not who we are and we probably won’t succeed in our façade. Like Jack, we’re outsiders and monsters. But also like Jack, we can enjoy our difference. We can use it to find a sense of purpose and meaningfulness. We might be monsters, but that’s okay.

* * *

In many ways, I’ve come a long way from that girl draped in black and sitting on a curb in Florida. Eventually in college I learned how to put on an act of confidence, and I’ve played that part long enough now that most of the time I can convince myself it’s not just a role. I’ve figured out how to balance my black humor and sarcasm, which make me happy, with a smiling disposition and cheerful demeanor, which make other people happy and usually make me happy too. I’ve mostly moved past my anxiety and depression and stubbornness, though they still haunt me from time to time. Though most of my wardrobe still consists of black clothes, I’ve also branched out into blue and red and green and even orange and purple. I’ve cut back on the eyeliner considerably, and I only bring out the fishnets and boots on special occasions (like Halloween!). A lot of people would tell me that I’ve grown up.

In other ways, however, I’m still not so different from that high school girl I used to be. As a newly minted graduate in a poor economy, I often look at my up-and-coming friends and feel plagued with self-doubt. In their photos on Facebook, they’re all smiling, and their status updates chronicle their successes in jobs and relationships. Of course, I rejoice at their victories in finding jobs and starting careers when the economic climate is so set against them. In one sense, their success gives me hope. But another part of me, unemployed and single, feels as though I’m stuck in a rut in my hometown. My twenties, I’m finding, are still an awful lot like my teenage years, especially in regards to being faced with new adult responsibilities while still feeling childish. I’m finding that a direction and a purpose in life do not come along with a diploma and a degree.

So, much like my teenage self, I still squeal with delight when I see the softball-like face of Jack Skellington grinning at me from the window of The Disney Store or Hot Topic. He reminds me that feeling like an outsider doesn’t have to be lonely or isolating. I can enjoy my monstrosity and play with my identity. Every day can be Halloween, in which I try on different personas, different aspects of myself, until I find one that I like and that fits. In fact, being different can lead me to a renewed sense of purpose of help me find my own meaning in life. I may not know what that is yet, but like Jack, after comparing myself to the conventionally attractive and happy people, I might just decide that it’s better to be a monster after all.