Yesterday I woke up and decided, “I am leaving the 7th today. It’s time to be a real person.” To clarify: I had to leave my neighborhood regardless, I just decided that this meant that I should also be a real person. When a friend complimented my dress I was a little taken aback by it.

“It’s the first time that I’ve worn proper clothing in a week.”

True story. And I’m doing it again today! Without even leaving my neighborhood! Two consecutive days in things that aren’t sweats or jeans and a t-shirt!

Somehow putting on proper clothing was the best way I could find to prove myself as a real person. This is what happens during finals. This is a fact of life for college students across the globe: when finals arrive, your ability to make yourself presentable departs.

Dressing the part has long been my answer to the great mystery of How To Be A Real Person. I have no idea how to be a Real Person. It’s like playing dress-up as a kid, where you got into the necessary costumes to perform your adult self. The expectation was that eventually you’d grow up and start being this Real Person, but that hasn’t quite happened.

A friend who graduated a year behind me was just sharing all of her taking-stock-of-her-life a year after graduation thoughts. She isn’t sure what she’s doing with her life, and it’s stressing her out. I started to say something to the effect of, “I remember that place.”

But aside from realizing how douchey that sounds, I also had to acknowledge that I remember it because I’m still there. Two years after graduation, I am still in that exact same place. I didn’t really find an answer; I just pushed it off.

I knew that going in, of course. I knew that graduate school was, in some way, a means of delaying that answer. It might be part of the answer — I am becoming increasingly aware that academia has had the effect of sucking me dry of every dollar I will ever earn (hey student loan debt!) while also stripping me of the ability to ever actually earn any money (hey learning to see exploitation happening everywhere!)

So, yeah, to a certain extent, I’ve started answering the question because I do think that I want to continue on and get my doctorate. Except, I’m in a very similar place now to the place I found myself in at the end of my undergraduate career: not yet. I need to take a moment to decompress. Also: I’m not sure yet. I was entirely certain about the whole graduate school thing by the time I got here, but I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t been. It felt enough like drowning as it was.

Granted, I still have finals to survive, followed by two more classes and that whole thesis thing, so it’s not as if I don’t have time.

But I don’t think I’m going to know what the hell I’m doing then either. It seems like a safe bet that even after I finish all of this I will have no clearer answer to the dilemma of, “How to be a real person,” than my current strategy of, “Dress the part.”

I don’t know how I feel about that.

Good thing I can’t really spend that much time figuring it out because I have shit to do.

Trying to figure out what happens after graduation is a surefire way to terminate/reduce procrastination because it’s one of few things that makes paper writing, by comparison, seem like an enjoyable activity.

Other things that I have been doing to avoid the things that I really should be doing:

• Writing something for Renee’s Powerful Woman Monologue series: “The Spectacle of a Woman Traveling Alone”
• Vlogging for The Expat Chronicles
• Playing Sporcle geography games like the true champion I am

Please give me new diversions because neither paper-writing, nor stressing over my inability to be a real person sound like fun activities right now.