Photo by Mathew MacQuarrie on Unsplash

Last weekend, I graduated from college. What came with that, the process of emptying and abandoning my apartment, the endless photographs, the disappointing convocation speaker, the rain (and terrible jokes from administration) beating down on me and my fellow graduates during commencement — it was all a real mess and I didn’t like it much.

College is of course a bubble, but it’s my bubble. It’s a societally-sanctioned, extended adolescence where, unlike in high school, I choose what I learn, what I eat and what I wear, who I spend my time with, and most importantly what I get to think about.

Graduation weekend feels like a small violation of that bubble, of that fussily tailored space that actively nurtures my ego, where only I matter and the world revolves around my needs.

The arrival of parents in particular feeds this narcissistic sense that I’m being oppressed. They walk around the campus like an amusement park, taking pictures of every building that you’ve seen a million times and then of you at graduation. They tell you how to think about your future, unspooling your narrative within their own minds, and (not unlike advertisers operating in our social media feeds) they tell you what you want.

This is, naturally, all a bunch of angsty whining. We should be grateful for the support of our parents, and to the institutions that prepare us. Yet, I couldn’t help but think that these feelings are a sort of signal. I couldn’t help feeling, as I crossed the stage and received my diploma, a horrifying dread and anxiety that the transition into the hypermodern workforce wouldn’t be a fun one. I couldn’t help but fixate on one thought as I was driven away from campus.

“So, this is the tyranny of adulthood.”