When You're No Longer The Recent Graduate Class

Remember it? The sweet relief of that last exam being over. The happiness of spending the days drinking with your course mates, planning trips and saving for summer.

Then came the move home, the bittersweet goodbyes and the sharp pain as life slapped you - hard - in the face. We were graduates, it was time to live in the real world.

Now, here we are, almost a full year later. Friends from all paths of life (uni, travelling, clydesiding and school) are going though that now. Their dissertation hand in photos and "last day of uni" pictures litter my timeline, in a happy, nostalgic kind of way. I'm proud of them, and happy for them.

But it brings with it the realisation that we're no longer the recently graduated class. And has anything changed? Ha, let the panic set in...

1. Friends are getting married/engaged or buying houses/pets with their boyfriends/girlfriends. This is not acceptable behaviour.
   
2. The "It is time to start repaying your student loan" letter has dropped through the letterbox. Nope, that one is being ignored.
   
3. The looks you receive when mentioning a spontaneous, week-night night out. As if I have a problem or something.
   
4. Learning to live with your parents again - ugh - or if you have moved out, the whole 'council tax' thing. Ha, great, extra bills.
   
5. The 'I'm going traveling' declaration. And then realising you should have been saving for at least a year and you can't just go right then. Damn.
   
6. The insistent surveys your uni wants you to fill in, telling them what you're doing with your invaluable degree and having to tell them you're a waitress/shop assistant/sales executive.
   
7. Your family members are getting increasingly concerned that you still don't know what you want to be when you grow up. Oh, wait, I'm running out of time.
   
8. Thinking you might need to go on that date just so your love life has some semblance of structure, as the rest of your life sure doesn't.
   
9. The difficulty in organising time to see uni friends who are now scattered across the UK. You have a full time job now, you can't just take four days off.
   
10. The heartbreaking moment you realise you can't hand over your student card in a shop or at the cinema and the crushing disappointment when you see how expensive 'adult' prices are.
    

A Small Thank You

What now?

It's a strange thing, suddenly being an "adult."

There are so many connotations of the word, are we just supposed to know? What suddenly makes me an adult? Is it just because my student card has run out? Because I'm working full time and paying bills - it can't be, I've certainly done that before. So what?

When does everything I learned at school come into play? And when does someone sit me down and tell me everything they failed to teach us?  Sure, I can use the co-sin rule, but when is someone going to tell me what the hell my credit rating is...or heaven forbid, does??

I graduated less than a month ago on a spectacularly sunny Thursday evening in Manchester, and come Friday, I was back home in Glasgow enjoying a day off - eating cake and watching sport on the TV. The hat and the gown and the handshake and all the photos didn't change anything. They didn't change me.

I can list with absolute certainty what did change me. University as a whole. In three short years I met people who changed me for the better, people who became friends quicker than you can imagine and people who grew with me. I have no doubt in my mind that the girls I lived with and the friends I made on my course will rock the world in all their different ways. I met some of the most creative minds who fueled my own, shaped my work and spurred me on through the writers block and just helped me have fun. I met people who spend even more time in their heads than I do and people even louder than me.

But opposite them, I met some of the most critical and brilliant minds in psychology, criminology, philosophy and business. Minds that see things in whole other ways, minds that see humour in everything and made me laugh on countless occasions. Girls confident in themselves, their image and their beauty who helped me see the same in myself. Girls who didn't judge if I sat on the sofa with a pint of ice-cream, but would encourage me to the gym as quickly as they would to a three-course meal in a restaurant.

I will miss these people more than I can imagine, but I know they are not simply part of my past, but a part of who I am. I have a lot to thank these people for, and I know they know who they are. We've already parted and gone our separate ways, but in these digital times, no distance is too far. Some are working, some are working to save, some are setting themselves up for further education and some are even jetting around the world as we speak. The wonders of the modern age.

So, to my fellow graduates, housemates and friends, I miss you. I wish you the best of luck. I thank you for everything. And of course, I wish you all the very best. You are some of the best people I know and you have given me the best three years of my life.

"Congraduation" class of 2014.