7 Stages of Grieving Your Graduation

It's a hard time for the class of 2015. College students are going back to school. Our schools. As much as I want to be happy for you current college kids, I'm blinded by jealousy and my taste of what adults are always referring to as "the real world". So yes, it's petty, but I'm not "liking" your Instagrams of the Old Well on FDOC. I'm not going to retweet #UNC16. Imma let you finish but...UNC 2015 had one of the best senior years of all time.

And here's what we're all going through now:

1. Shock
(The literal second they hand you a piece of paper that's like an IOU for your diploma that will be mailed MONTHS later.)
4 years and 2 hours later is my collegiate career really over? It really seems like just yesterday that I was buying my first energy drink and making Wikipedia my homepage. I feel like such a fool now for once complaining about time spent in the library and food questioned in the dining hall.

2. Denial
(When your family goes home after your graduation and you go through your ice cream stockpile while watching rom-coms and ugly crying.)
No. There is absolutely no way I have spent 4 years here. I graduated high school like 3 seconds ago. What do I do now? Get a job and use terms like "401k" and "mortgage" and "cholesterol"? As if! I'll stick to quoting Clueless.

3. Anger
(Your first FDOC post-graduation.)
Who are all these infants on my campus? There is probably someone living in my first-year dorm room who wasn't even alive when O.J. was acquitted. Now THEY get to go to MY parties and MY classes and hang out with MY friends while I go to work and pay bills. Now I see why old people get frown lines.

4. Bargaining
(When your parents ask you if you have a job yet for the 5th time that day.)
I can always go to grad school right? Let's brainstorm ways I can have an income with all the flexibility of unemployment. I know! Write a super successful blog and get paid every time someone clicks on an ad. (That's where you guys come in.)

5. Guilt
(When friends you graduated with post pictures from grad school and that could have been you.)
How could I have let this happen? I ALMOST failed a few classes, it wasn't that hard. With more absences and less completed assignments I could have easily stretched it out another semester. I will never forgive myself, or my adviser, for letting this happen.

6. Depression
(Might wanna go ahead and set up shop here, make yourself comfortable.)
Basically the rest of forever.

7. Acceptance 
(TBD.)
Not an actual stage. This never happens.


*I was either challenged or asked to blog about cheese this week, I'm not quite sure which. It was either a dare or someone just has reason to believe I might be particularly adept at blogging about dairy products. So...my personal favorite is goat cheese but it's not very versatile so I'm also quite partial to American cheese but, and this is very important, white American cheese is much better than orange/yellow American cheese. Think Subway or the Top of Lenoir at UNC and wow this post has really come full circle.