Ms. Alumna

This is my new blog, welcome! I am a woman of many interests: a recent college grad who majored in Psychology and minored in Art History, participated in a wonderful student theater group (Go BU StageTroupe!) and generally enjoyed tromping around Boston like there was no tomorrow. While I know that it was time to leave after four years to return home to my beloved New York to be with family, friends and boyfriend, I will always have an ache in my heart for Boston, the city where I became a woman. I never anticipated loving college so much, and I never anticipated how it would change me. Although I left home temporarily when I was sixteen to act in a TV show that shot in Vancouver, B.C., I was attached to my family and less independent than I thought I was. In theory I loved travel, but in reality I clung to the life that I was used to and had little interest in pursuing the "college experience." That being said, I had a moment when I came to BU for an accepted students' open house and I realized that my college experience would be about more than college experience; it was a city experience. While I loved BU itself and its sprawling campus and colorful student body, I think I would have gone a little nuts if it weren't for regular excursions through and around the city, experiencing the different neighborhoods and acquiring the memories that keep flashing through my mind as I try to prepare myself to let go of the place that was my home for four years. New York is my home and my first love, but Boston is my city that was uniquely my own, where separately from the family and friends of my childhood, I made a life for myself that was rich and challenging and glorious. In this blog I am hoping to explore what I've learned and what I'm still learning about the art of being a woman (a grown-up woman). As college comes to a close and you receive that big, fat degree (it really is huge, which I found very satisfying), you start to feel these moments of "shit, I'm a grown-up, but I don't know what that even means." Life (or in my case, my mother) hands you a huge plastic filing box where you are expected to actually file and organize your bank statements, your student loan payments, your tax information. One minute everyone's saying you're young and there's no rush, and the next they're asking when you're moving, when you're taking the GRE, what your "plans" are. You go from feeling super-accomplished with your big fat degree to feeling like you haven't really accomplished anything yet, and you better start accomplishing because your friends are already naming their salaries and setting up 401(k)s. I feel like Emma when she realizes that she really has nothing figured out at all. Here we go.