While at home for Thanksgiving break, I had this delusion that I would finish every neglected scrap of homework that had piled up over the semester, and this flurry of productivity would occur just as soon as I finished playing The Sims computer game. But one never finishes playing The Sims, especially if one is a senior looking for answers.
Registering for my last semester of classes, meeting with advisors, and now visiting home and facing the first serious wave of “so what are you doing after graduation?” from well-meaning family and friends, I realize that I should have willed myself to be better at math so I could graduate from the Engineering and Architecture Schools with skills enough to design the world’s first edible skyscraper. “So what ARE you doing after graduation?” they ask. Why, thanks for asking! After I remove this ice-pick of inquiry you jammed into my eyeball, I’m going to graduate in May, fall asleep in a gutter, and if I’m lucky, sewer rats will gnaw my fingernails off.
I continue getting weekly e-mails from the Career Center: Lunch with a Pro! Interview Skills! World Class Resumes! I get pleasant invitations from the Career Center to call and set up an appointment with a Career Counselor. If I delete mail from the Career Center, I can convince myself that the Career Center no longer exists and that Wash U has provided no help for my post-college life. That way, I can happily slip into an unoccupied gutter for my rodent manicure. But I’m not going to play the blame game. I am going to play The Sims, and over my shoulder Mom will casually bring up the Career Center and you really should go visit the Career Center and did you know they have alumni resources at the Career Center?
I hate playing The Sims, but it’s more addictive than Crystal Meth. I dedicated an entire column last year to my fascination with The Sims, a computer game where you control the daily lives of simulated people. I found out the hard way that, yes, sometimes Sims will pee on the floor. If a simulated adult with a simulated house, a simulated job, and a simulated life under my care PEES ON THE FLOOR, does this reflect poorly on my ability to function in the real world? The brainwashing aspect of this game is that I start thinking of my own life in terms of all those little “need meters” at the bottom of the screen. I made a grilled cheese sandwich and thought that this will certainly add points to my hunger meter. What? I have no hunger meter! But I better get to a toilet before my bladder meter hits critical and I have an accident.
“You know, Marisa,” my mom said, “you can take that game back to St Louis with you if you just want to fail your classes and hold off on graduation.” She was joking of course, but-wait, you were joking, weren’t you? Because if you weren’t, that option doesn’t sound all that bad. On the other hand, I don’t want to stay in school forever and mutate into that grazing species of “Perpetual Wash U Student,” like those students today who know that Prince Hall used to be a boys dormitory and not because they learned it on a campus tour. (SEE ALSO: Graduate Student)
As for my life after college, it’s good to know what I don’t want. I know for certain I don’t want to work in customer service. After unrewarding jobs in retail, I’ve come to the conclusion that I hate people who want to buy things. I’ve never devoted a column to my experience working at Bed, Bath and Beyond, but here it is in one sentence: I DON’T KNOW THE GODDAMN THREAD COUNT OF THOSE SHEETS, NOW PISS OFF BEFORE YOU UNFOLD THAT TOWEL I JUST FOLDED!
I’m not breaking new ground writing about post-college anxiety. The title of this column is an oblique reference to The Graduate, a movie about life after college and having sex with Anne Bancroft. Well, I have no advice regarding the latter or, for that matter, the former. The only comfort I have to offer is what I’ve learned from my three years experience of acting in Freshman Orientation’s Choices 101: everybody is going through the same thing you are. I also learned that if you get caught plagiarizing a term paper about Geofluvialmorphology, you are going to get a hearty SMACKO! from the Academic Integrity committee. Choices 101, you were there when I needed you most.
During my freshman year, I read a “Cadenza” column about life after Wash U, and I remember thinking, “silly senior, you’re such a whiny little baby.” Woe is me. I need to stop flushing my pity potty and get my butt to the Career Center because the Career Center will obviously solve all my problems and make me a better person and, oh my gosh, the Career Center is handing out Soma! But seriously, I need to go to the Career Center. And I will. Just as soon as I finish playing The Sims.

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