Corporate.

It was all rather anti-climatic. 

That feeling of the pen leaving your hand, and the sound of it hitting the desk for the last time was something to celebrate. All those long, laborious hours spent staring at words - printed words, digital words. The voices which talked at you for hours, attempting to put a story together...attempting to convince you that what they had to say would benefit you for years to come.

You were building a foundation.

You were building a future. 

You watch the movies, and you read the articles - without doing the hard yards, you aren't going to make the big bucks. Not going wasn't even an option. For some it doesn't matter why you are there, for some just making it that far was enough of an achievement. So it should be. After eighteen years of raised hands, bathroom breaks and scheduled meal times - who shouldn't relish in the freedom that has been bestowed on them? You deserve it. 

Yeah, you might have woken up with a grizzly face (or next to one) after a big night out. You might have maxed out on the energy drinks, spent one too many minutes trying to push all four colours down on your Bic pen...but you were working towards the interview...the job...the dream. 

And then you made it. 

You packed your bags and headed to the big city. University was hard - you felt the pain, you did the hours. This is the easy part of life. It is what you had been dreaming over years, and years of lessons we thought we would need to carry us through life. No authority, no rules, no books, no paper, no pens...

Ha.

It really hurts sitting in a chair, staring at a screen all, darn day long. Nobody trained me for that? What about pretending to know what you are doing all the time? Living up to expectations? Being accountable? Taking responsibility? Nope - nothing. Sorry, I must have not spent a million hours writing an essay on that? It simply was not incorporated into the structure of my thesis that I just spent the last 4 years perfecting. No can do. 

I didn't do law, nor medicine or engineering. The issues that a lot of us face are not written in code. We don't respond from our learnings. We respond from our personalities, our character traits and our overall tolerances of the people we work with. I might have not done a degree that is directly related to what I do, but I sure do wish that I spent more time at school preparing for the culture of the real world, the environment of the real world and the people of the real world. 

My studies are proving to be useless. Something tells me that my major in History isn't going to help me sort out my life. Henry VIII and all his bloody wives won't be able to teach me a thing or two about sticking to commitment. What about my intrigue in Classical Mythology? All the incest, human/animal combos and polygamy sure didn't set me up for some realistic expectation about the grown-up world. Who knows what that Criminology paper taught me about dealing with my issues...

Somebody told me that it was all part of the teething process. And they were right - once you grow a full set, you will be able to chomp off as much as you can chew.  

Until then - watch this space. 

- C.