Why is Graduating College such a Big Deal?

A personal reflection on the major stages of the past 4 years and why I feel underwhelmed by the societal landmark of graduation.

Has anyone else ever googled, “Why do people make such a big deal out of graduating college,” and spent 30 minutes on Quora reading different answers? No? Well, after countless bombardment on Facebook and Instagram of people’s graduation posts, I finally had to google it.

I mean, I graduated with a BA from the University of Texas at Austin this past Fall, took some pictures and forgot to post them anywhere, and I thought, “Ok, now what..?” or yeah “I graduated college..and?” Then again, I also didn’t have the “traditional” 4-year college experience, and I’m also a chronic pessimist. So although this isn’t a travel post, and this is intended to be a travel blog, I figured I would tell my story of the last 4 (well, 3.5) years. It’s a little too crazy and long for Instagram.

WHERE IT ALL STARTED: “THE HILLTOP”

St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas. Photo by St. Edwards University

Before Freshman year, as an 18-year-old graduating high-school, I had no clue about money, the value of a dollar, etc. I had my sights set on Georgetown University, NYU, and Tulane, which are all around $50,000 $70,000 a year. Now, looking back, I’m staggered at the thought of graduating with $200,000 in student loan debt, but four years ago I thought these price tags were the norm. I also applied to the University of Texas at Austin (second choice) and St. Edward’s University (back-up school) because I was sure I would be able to go somewhere exotic, far away, and different. Luckily, I got into NYU but at $72,000 a year in tuition and no scholarships I knew there was no way it was affordable. Speaking of funds, I had been banking on awards but to be honest unless you are a non-white person or have a hard life story you can forget about them. I will nuance that with saying there are exceptions and special cases. I wish someone had given me a reality check back then. But to be honest, I probably wouldn’t have listened.

Getting rejected from UT Austin on my first attempt, I had no other choice but to go to St. Edward’s University. At $20,000 a year, I thought it was overpriced but still, “normal.” I can now say with near certainty it was one of the biggest financial mistakes of my entire life. I half knew that going into it, but it was still in Austin and I desperately wanted to leave my hometown of Houston. So during my first year of college at STE, I made some friends and reconnected with some old ones. But the classes were painstakingly easy and I felt like the main focus was fashion and theatre. I complained about the dining hall food a lot and learned Arabic for a year, and that pretty much sums it up. Having worked minimally hard to get a 4.0 GPA, I transferred to UT Austin as a Sophomore still majoring in International Relations.

NEW SCHOOL, SAME PEOPLE

Eli hosting a party in our apartment. Photo by Hailey Lassiter.
Ella enjoying the party. Photo by Hailey Lassiter.

The first year at UT was a harder transition than I had hoped and imagined. I didn’t have the security blanket of freshman year dorm-friends, and in a school with 40,000 students, I struggled to thrive and stand out. It was overwhelming, isolating, and quite frankly really hard. Emotionally, socially, academically, basically in every way you can think of, it was challenging to get through the year. On a positive note, that same year was when I experienced my first apartment, tasted true freedom for the first time, and lived on my own for the first time. I’m not sure if the last one is a positive though, considering how I burned and threw away nearly everything I tried to cook and the apartment was always messy with my three other roommates and on top of everything else we had a dog. We had a lot of great memories there though, and I wouldn’t change it for a thing.

By the end of my Sophomore year, I was thinking about where I was going to study abroad, or rather which Spanish-speaking country I was going to choose. I had initially planned to go to the Middle-East (note the freshman studying Arabic), but after some credit complications with UT, I decided to switch to back to Spanish (and I’m damn glad I did).

QUEUE STUDY ABROAD: PERU

Rainbow Mountain in Peru

The next thing I knew, I was taking the adventure of a lifetime. I was going to live in Lima, Peru for 6 months. People always ask me, “why Peru?” and I don’t know why but what I do know is when I was around 18 I wrote in the back of one of my diaries, “Fuck this, I’m moving to Peru.” I just kind of knew I wanted to go there and at points even felt like I was “going back.” Once I was there, I never experienced “culture shock” and truly felt at home. After a few weeks and up until the last month, my only wish was to stay longer. I wish I would’ve documented it better. I met so many interesting, lovely, and welcoming people that studied at my university, Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru or PUCP. I received a $5,000 Teresa Lozano Long scholarship and because of that took trips to la Selva or the Amazon jungle, up and down the Pacific coast, and into different parts of la Sierra or the Andes mountains. Of course, I visited Machu Picchu, after taking the 4-day Salkantay Trek to get there. It was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful, hardest, and rewarding things I’ve done. In short, a friend and I looked up people’s self-guided explanations online who had done the trek and set off with our backpacks and gear from Cusco to Soraypampa, the starting point. We didn’t have a guide, we didn’t have any donkeys carrying our things, and climbing over the Salkantay Range with a backpack eventually broke me down to tears.  At certain points, I didn’t think I was going to make it, the elevation reaching 4,600 meters or 15,000 feet. But I did. For all its challenges and beauty, not to mention for its path to Machu Picchu, the Salkantay trek will forever stay with me.

Machu Picchu

I also went to Huaraz, a little known backpacker’s haven, which is a quaint, quiet town 7 hours north of Lima that is definitely worth the bus ride.  We visited Chavín, a pre-Incan site that’s truly fascinating, as well as Laguna 69 which is stunningly beautiful. At another point, I returned to Cusco with a friend visiting me from the US, and we went to Pisaq and some hot springs in the middle of nowhere Peru (my favorite place). In Pisaq, we had no plan but met a couple in a cafe who invited us up to the house they were staying at, which was this woman’s beautiful guest house with all these cool other travelers, and I think we paid $5 a night. A testament to the kindness and warmth of Peruvian people. Pisaq is similar ruins to Macchu Picchu except it was more like a “regular” city while Machhu was the “capital.” Some other significant trips I took were from Arequipa or the White City to Bolivia which I wrote about in my last post! La Merced which is in the Amazon (7-8 hrs from Lima), which you can go to if you avoid going all the way to Iquitos to get to la Selva. The last trip was from Lima to Piura which is also a 7-hour bus ride from Lima and is a landing point city to visit nearby beach towns like Lobitos,  Los Organos, and Mancora. To culminate my study abroad experience, I decided to take a solo-backpacking-trip to Colombia for two weeks. There I experienced my first near death/Couchsurfing experience when I became homeless in a small town called Minca, and I got lost hiking alone in Parque Tayrona that same day. But Colombia is still one of my best choices because it taught me so much about what I can do.

Going to South America my Junior year is probably one of the only reasons I don’t regret going to college entirely. (Well that and the fact that I wouldn’t be able to get any decent job without a BA). It was undoubtedly one of the best parts of the last four years and to anyone thinking about studying abroad or going to Peru/South America who’s reading this, go!!

THE ANIMAL HOUSE: PEARL ST. CO-OP

Yes, I lived there. Photo by College Houses.

Once I got back stateside, it was almost as if I was starting all over again. I went to live in the heart of UT’s student housing, West Campus, in a Co-op called Pearl Street. While in my head I had imagined an “International House” with people from all over the world and bonfires every night, in reality, it was somewhat of an animal house having almost 100 residents. Maybe if I had been at another point in my life, or hadn’t spent so many nights of my first two years in Austin on Dirty 6th Street, I would have enjoyed Pearl Street’s weekly or even bi-weekly parties with kegs and drugs abounding. Or the relentless question, “are you going out tonight,” every Thirsty Thursday night. Unfortunately, as when I had started my sophomore year at UT, I found myself drowned in all the crowds and commotion. I did make a few valuable connections, but all in all, I felt like a stranger in my own home. It was hard to meet all 100 of my roommates and even harder to make deep relationships in an atmosphere so geared towards partying and chasing the next high. On a happy note, we recreated Burning man and had our mini-burn festival where we built a Lady Pearl effigy and burned it to the ground. I also think back fondly on “destruction night” where we freely smashed old pieces of furniture to smithereens. I’ve always been a bit of an anarchist, so I was really into these kinds of things that the co-op culture introduced me to.

TRAVEL BUG BITES AGAIN: SUMMER IN EUROPE

Amsterdam, home of the real coffeeshop. Photo by me.
Looking out in Spain. Photo by Joshua van den Hurk.

South America had left me with a thirst to travel, so after a few weeks of being back I booked a flight to Europe where I would spend the next 3 months of the summer. In very concise terms, I spent 3 weeks in Amsterdam, then 2.5 months traveling with my friend (boyfriend at the time), Josh, in a van. We converted it into a sleeper van ourselves and cooked with a propane stove at night and surfed all day. It was our way to have an awesome trip for an extended period of time.

THE LAST SEMESTER: FIN

My final semester at UT, I opted out of living in Pearl St. again but clung to the familiarity of the co-op structure. I went to live at Macro House which I found on Airbnb, advertised as a house of friendly “young professionals.” My roomies were neither very young or professional, but I loved them. There I had 40 roommates, and there was a core group of 15-20 people which I came to know well. We still had parties and outings, but nowhere near on the level of frequency and intensity as Pearl St. It’s the kind of place I can go back to and still feel welcomed and at home, even if most of my old roommates have left and moved on.

Walking away from it all. Photo by Amber Loflin.

So after transferring schools, visiting a handful of countries, and living in 4 or 5 different places, I can say I’ve graduated college. But unlike my peers, I never walked across a stage, never threw a graduation party, and skipped the ceremonial aspects of graduating university. Which still leaves me with the lingering question, why do my peers make such a big deal out of the last four years? Does anyone else share the sentiment that it’s all a little over the top? In my eyes, life is just beginning; once again, another chapter is opening which has new experiences, new people, and (for me) new countries in store. While I wasn’t ecstatic about graduation, I am so happy to see what’s ahead. I feel happier each day. Somehow, after all of the moving, studying, traveling, and partying, I’ve come out a better person. A more conscious human, concerned less about how I look on the outside and more about how I feel on the inside. It might sound cliche, but I’ve grown up and gotten to know myself better. And for that I’m grateful.

Having fulfilled all of my credit requirements, I un-ceremoniously graduated at the end of this past December. Since I moved around so much, and I graduated early, there weren’t many people I knew that graduated alongside me. And that’s ok—I’ve always been a bit of a lone wolf, and I don’t feel embarrassed or sad about it. I did get my cap and gown and took some pictures back in Houston, Texas because I thought, “maybe when I’m older, I’ll want these.”

I’m also incredibly grateful for you if you have read this far. It means so much to me, and I would love to know what you think. So comment below or get in touch, I’d love to hear from you. And stay tuned for my next post, which will hopefully be in another country far from the United States. I have some contracts in the works, but I don’t want to announce anything until I’m sure. Thanks again & until next time, take care!

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