A few days before my college graduation, my wallet disappeared. It was remarkably disorienting. The last week before graduation is surreal anyway. And now I was navigating it without cash, my student I.D., or the familiar lump in my back pocket. But once I gave up looking for it, I started to see the loss as symbolic of the whole disorienting, painful, and yet liberating process of letting go of college.

One of the hardest things about graduation is knowing what to pack -what to take with you and what to leave behind.

Sometimes you don’t get to make the decision yourself. Your wallet disappears; your friends get jobs that take them to the opposite side of the country; your furniture doesn’t fit in the U-Haul. Most of the time, however, you have to make the decisions yourself. And it’s hard to know what to keep and what to throw away. As seniors’ final move-out day approaches, dumpsters turn into gold mines as panic sets in over the finite carrying capacity of even a behemoth SUV.

There is much you’ll want to hang onto. Memories, of course. Pictures. CDs you ripped in the heyday of Napster. The architectural model you stayed up 40 hours straight to finish. A novel that has haunted you since you read it sophomore year. But most of what you will be taking with you doesn’t fit in a box: an enlarged view of the complexity and diversity of the world we live in; a critical eye for the one-sidedness of a newspaper article or commencement address; and an appreciation for the importance of distinct research issues that once seemed to be a boring, confusing blur. There is more that you are taking with you than you may realize.

But there may also be plenty you’ll want to leave behind. Wherever you are headed – even if it’s your parents’ house – graduation gives you an opportunity to break some bad habits and shed parts of yourself that you’ve outgrown. There’s a visceral thrill to throwing stuff in the dumpster. Opening yourself up to change will land in unknown territory, of course, and that can be terrifying. But all you need to do – and this is the key – is give yourself permission to ask numbskull questions. Because when you ask people for help, you are indirectly making a compliment. And you often end up making friends in the process.

Sometimes, of course, you’ll throw the wrong stuff away. But don’t worry. It will probably track you down. You’ll end up living in the same town in Connecticut with someone you never thought you’d see again. Floundering in a new job, you’ll end up buying a copy of the Psych Statistics textbook that you sold at the Lock & Chain book sale. Even lost items have a way of turning up.

Three years after I graduated from college, I was visiting my sister in Brooklyn. I sat in my favorite, tattered easy chair, my grandfather’s, which I had given her when I left for Germany after graduation. Out of old habit, I stuck my hand under the cushion, to that spot where my roommates’ stuff always used to disappear. And there was my wallet. With some pictures, $43, and my college I.D.

Good luck packing. Most of what you’ll need, you’ll be able to come up with. Even if it takes a while to find it. Congratulations and best wishes!

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