THE Noah is GRADUATED!

Laundry List

Me: I GRADUATED!!!!
Everyone: "What will you do in your future?"
Me: Start blogging again I guess

"Hey Everyone!"
I said, not knowing who everyone was, but hoping someone hadn't unfollowed his blog in the last 10 quiet months. 

I'm not even going to apologize for not posting or make up some excuse or anything. I'm just lazy!

Actually school, and working 30-40 hrs a week, and also school. I lied about not making excuses. I've got a laundry list of them (see reference image)! I took college calculus and chemistry courses, and saved up enough money to not have to work while I'm studying mechanical engineering at UAB.

...But mostly I didn't post because I'm lazy.

Graduation for Reference

Anyway, that high-schooler Noah, not the mature alumni Noah that stands before you today (or... writes before you today?). Now that I'm DONE with high-school I guess I should feel a wave of relief, but I really don't. Graduating is kinda weird in a way that no one really prepares you for. Honestly, everyone acts like it's a huge, ceremonial end of a chapter and the start of a new story that you get to write for yourself. But the actual ceremony is just a boring speech while someone slowly reads the names of a large group of people who enrolled in the same school as you, and for some reason you aren't allowed to leave after they call your name and hand you your diploma. After the boring part a couple people who are unqualified to tell a diverse group of people how to live their lives make a bunch of impractical "motivational" suggestions like "follow your dreams" "shape the future" "have no fears" and "nothing is impossible."

I just have to sit in the audience and wonder "what if my dreams are stupid? What if fear keeps me from overreaching and making mistakes? Does unwavering belief that everything I pour my heart into will eventually work better prepare me for successes and failures along the way?"

To me, this all feels less like the end of a chapter and more like the end of a book series and the start of a new, entirely unrelated series with the same lead actor and a completely separate plot.

-Editor note: do books have actors? I'm not sure. I don't read much.-

What I'm saying is I don't know how much being a kid has prepared me for not being a kid. Making great ACT scores via trial and error convinced colleges that I'm mature, but it hasn't actually made me smarter. I'm at a point of convergence between the time when people would ask "what are you going to be when you grow up?" and the point where people ask "what are you?" or "what's your major?" or "what's your pursuit?" I don't know what I want to pursue for lunch, let alone my future career! I know how to describe the feeling: Have you ever had a dream where you show up to work with no pants and you have to decide whether to bolt and get fired or suck it up and clock in? It's like that, but with $30,000 a year riding on your ability to play it off like you have a plan. 

- Well, $30,000 in scholarships, which are essentially glorified college coupons, and financial aid, which is government intervention that serves to make college more expensive for everyone by paying schools to favor the least qualified over the most qualified based partially on racist and classist ideologies. -

Scholarships for Reference

Side tangent aside. I feel grossly unprepared to take on any of life's challenges, and slightly unsure of who I am and who I want to be. Fortunately, I've got a couple of months to figure all that out before the fall.

Not really sure how to end this. I wonder if anyone else feels nervous about escaping the comfortable, laid back world of high-school. Either way, I'm pretty sure everything will work itself out and I'll just pretend whatever random things happen to me were part of the plan all along. 




Also, who the heck is still reading this blog?

- THE Noah