Margaret BauerFour years ago, at the Freshman Convocation, Professor Lee Epstein told us, “I am, you are, we all are-profoundly uncertain.” Now four years later those words seem to have greater meaning and greater relavence.
Life as an undergraduate had a comfortable level of certainty. We knew what classes we had to take to graduate, we created cozy circles of friends, and we padded our r‚sum‚s with neat extracurricular activivities and summer jobs. About the biggest unknown for many of us was where we were going to live next year-the 40, Small Group Housing, or off-campus?
But now as we are recognized for our undergraduate achievements, for many of us this celebration is overcast by clouds of uncertainty. Some of us are going to graduate school, others are looking for jobs or transitional programs, but almost everyone I know is leaving St. Louis.
Thus in addition to the uncertainty surrounding our career ambitions, we feel the somewhat unique pressure of ending friendships and relationships as we dissipate to the various corners of the country, and abroad. We will be moving to new cities, doing different things, and making new friends-and that is a lot scarier at 22 than it is at 18.
A third layer of uneasiness exists in the unpredictability of life after college. More and more, academic concepts like interest rates and job creation plans will affect our everyday lives. And as we graduate in an election year, the philosophy of our government on important issues such as the war in Iraq, taxes, and health care remains highly uncertain. On an international level, Thomas Friedman will no doubt articulate the perils of our foreign policy.
Despite these uncertainties I am extremely excited about life after college. I have had wonderful times at Washington University writing for this newspaper, studying abroad, hanging out with my friends and fraternity brothers, but I do not think graduation is so much a time to reflect as it is an opportunity to look ahead. It is not so much an end as a new beginning. There is nothing wrong with being profoundly uncertain, especially when we have equipped ourselves, these last four years, with the tools to be successful in many facets of life.
There is a Chinese proverb that goes, “To be uncertain is uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.” As far as I’m concerned, the only thing that should be ridiculous should be our senior week.