As I’m sailing the deep blue seas of the Caribbean, I’ve asked a few special gals to guest blog for me. Today, we stop in Grand Cayman where I will spend the day swimming with sting rays and dolphins. Try not to be too jealous of me!
Today’s guest blog comes from Lauren of Lauren Ever After. I’ve been reading Lauren’s blog for a long time now and I just absolutely adore her writing. I get swept away in almost every post she writes. She blogs about writing, her struggles, and school. Well, the latter for not much longer as she just became a college graduate! (Congrats, lady!) Today, she’s talking about the freedom found in closing the door on this chapter of her life and starting a new one.
I’ve been thinking about what life after college would be like for a long time. I had a love-hate relationship with school for various reasons: my parents and I arguing about my major, feeling as though my family was suffocating me with their expectations, having to put up with them constantly putting down my decisions throughout my academic career. Do you recognize a pattern? It might not be as obvious as it appears. I’m talking about external influences. They’re binding. If you let them rule your mentality, they will clasp their chains around you and lock you in a cold, haunting Charleston dungeon.
With graduating from college comes freedom. Opportunities await to grow professionally, mentally, spiritually. Freedom frees you, but it also challenges you. Freedom brings about change and new beginnings. I think probably the most freeing thing for me is knowing that no matter what happens, I know who I want to become. I have those standards set for myself. And I know what I love, I know what I want to do. As long as I’m writing, I’m happy, no matter my 40-hour job title. Writing brings its own opportunities. Writing connects me to people, helps me learn their ways. And in knowing that God gave me that gift, knowing that writing isn’t just something with which to please myself but also to please God and others, gives me far more comfort and purpose than it would otherwise, and that is a challenge in itself. A welcomed one. I like knowing that my gift is a craft, and in some ways a science.
My graduation isn’t just freeing me from the obligations of academics, but from the mindset that period of my life saw me in. I can’t change my perspective of the past, but I can change my perspective on it and learn from it. There is nothing more freeing than knowing that, as long as God will have you, there’s an opportunity to change, learn, grow. That is what graduation is all about: opportunities. We can search for them, make them, let them fall upon us. They will come. We just have to free ourselves enough to recognize them when they’re there.
How did graduating from college affect your mindset? Any advice to Lauren as she embarks on a new chapter in her life?
Congrats on graduating Lauren! Honestly, I can’t wait to graduate- in 3 years from now. By degree feels eternal but I really hope it pays off in the end. I can’t wait to see what kind of opportunities await me when it’s all done. Best of luck to you lady!