About pop: How Thanksgiving Differs For a Graduate

Thanksgiving was very different for me this year. I want to say less stressful as I remember last year’s Thanksgiving and how I was desperately writing my thesis however, truthfully it’s not. I still slept poorly, plagued by anxious thoughts about “all the work I have to do.” I still enjoyed eating delicious food because I’m sick of the food I always eat at home. Last year at this time I had to finish my coursework satisfactorily and graduate. This year I need to find a job. Equally as daunting. But things definitely still felt different and I did not feel like I was back in school.

1) I had a week off. Four days after Jordan and I arrived at his house, his sister arrived home from college. She had from Tuesday night to Sunday morning at home. And she skipped a few classes. We had from Saturday to Saturday, and we didn’t skip anything- no classes, no work. That was nice.

2) Coursework never pauses, the job search does. In school there are always things to be done and even on weekends, emails are being exchanged among lab groups and students and professors. However, when you’re searching for a job, you know Thanksgiving week is a pointless time to attempt to network. No one’s around. And when they do check their email they’ll sure as heck not answer your request for an informational interview. That all waits until after Thanksgiving. So I stopped worrying and stopped contacting people. I figured it could all wait a week, especially since people wouldn’t be responding anyway.

3) There is no pre-Christmas rush. Remember scrambling desperately to get all your work done before the semester ended and Christmas rolled around? Well the new fiscal year for many organizations/institutions begins in January. That means not many people are going to be hiring in the time right after Thanksgiving and right before the New Year. This was yet another reason to relax over Thanksgiving- there’s no use pushing out applications that probably won’t even be considered anyway because you don’t know anyone at the organization to which you’re applying.

4) (This one’s kind of sad) I was SUPER depressed to return to my real life. We had an electricity bill waiting for us and I had a job rejection letter waiting specially for me. Yikes. Instead of returning to a fun college campus we returned to an apartment where we debated whether we should turn on the heat.

Yes, I enjoyed my Thanksgiving. Yes, I would say it was better than most because I really appreciated my time off as actual time off. Though being a post-graduate can be very stressful, I’m learning to take time away when I need it. And that’s a huge lesson, one that’s almost impossible to learn when you’re in school. And learning this lesson allows me to watch The City and eat pumpkin cheesecake at 1 in the morning without worrying that all the stimulation will keep me awake. Not bad.

Here are some photos from my first post-college Thanksgiving. We had an insane amount of food and a lovely place setting.