Jessie Ede Blog 10

332 has certainly been an experience. I was pretty unsure about the journey I was about to embark upon after the first couple of classes, but the beauty of GERs is that you need them to graduate so I resigned myself to a semester of weird. I am a very independent, introverted person and while things like public speaking do not bother me at all, acting things out or simply discussing my thought process out loud with people I am not close with does not really appeal to me. I am alive, though, and I think I managed to learn something about myself in the process. This class made me realize that I do not fear change with graduation, but the absence of change. Savage Nights claims the majority of credit for this epiphany. Jean is confronting the reality of his impending death, something that cannot possibly seem real to anyone who generally looks and feels fine. He acts out in order to feel alive to make sure that he really is still alive and not going slowly towards death like his disease dictates. He needs things to constantly go, to change, to bring excitement in order to hold on to the feelings of being okay. Watching Jean recklessly pursue life made me wonder if all of my own anxieties about the future are because I fear transitioning from undergraduate life and letting that part of me die. As it turns out, I am much more afraid of being in this weird early twenties state forever - generally competent and educated, but not to the point where I am qualified or asked to do anything of serious importance. That, for me, is what "real" life is, and working a random retail job or as a secretary or something would just be a continuation of where I am now - no living, no progress, just the same with no substantive change to myself or experiences. Graduation does not scare me because it represents new experiences, but because there is the chance that it might not. Sorry if that got a little dark, but I think this is an important distinction that I have been wrestling with for the past year. This is the type of fear that does not paralyze, but rather acts as a driving motivation for change, so I guess I have come out of this class with a renewed drive and energy for doing something substantive with my life. It is not as though that was ever really out of my hopes, but momentum is an easy thing to lose and I think the facing of this fear will give me an extra push. So thanks, 332, for putting an articulate thought to how I feel about post-grad life.