The last eighteen years of my life have been centered around school. Some of those school years have been happy (particularly the last six), and others less so (I’m looking at you, middle school). And now I’m finished, and there’s this gap in my life, this empty space, this lack of purpose. There is much work to be done as I try and rearrange my life without school occupying the central stage nine months of every year.
Of course, I still have comics. I left myself with scripts for the next three issues of Wits End, a gift from pre-graduation Allison to post-graduation Allison, a life-preserver in the sea of possibilities across which might lie untold treasures or barren desert islands. Additional projects are cropping up, reminding me that my network of classmates and friends did not evaporate when we finished our degrees, just dispersed. I have a job, which helps me to structure my time and get out of bed in the mornings as well as paying my bills. There are other jobs for which I can apply and perhaps reconstruct my life around. And if I really can’t live without school, I can always get a PHD, or a sturdy, reliable MBA to balance out my beautifully impractical MFA in comics. Return to the comfortable world of school for a few more years.
But still, right now, in the searching period, the figuring-out-what’s-next time, there’s this gap, this knowledge that the underlying structure of the last eighteen years of my life is gone. And maybe I have freedom and independence I’ve never experienced before, and maybe there are millions of other things around which I can start to rebuild my life’s structure, but at the moment the sense of loss is strong. Accepting a diploma and finishing a degree at a school you love is bittersweet.
I wish you all the best in your own times of transition.