Life After Bradley

With graduation less than a month away, the pressure to figure out what you're doing afterwards is on. It seemed like everyone in my classes had a job lined up or was going to grad school. Not me. I knew my path was going to be a little different, because I want to go into publishing, which isn't a direct application of my degree. It will be useful, for sure, but I would have to prove that to a hiring manager. Industry standard is applying for a job two weeks before you're ready to start, so even while I was applying, no one was going to take me seriously until May. Plus, I had my heart set on getting a graduate certificate in publishing, which would give me the edge I needed to get in for an interview. I had no idea what I would be doing after graduation.

Fortunately for me, most of my friends are not in my major, and were pretty clueless as to their next step too. Yeah, Katrina's sitting pretty with a nice software job in South Carolina and Alex is off to Arizona at one of the top research institutions for fiber-optic-something-sciencey-that-I-don't-understand. But the rest of us? No clue. So I had plenty of people to commiserate with.

Last Friday, that changed. I got into the Denver Publishing Institute! Man, I wish I had gotten it on camera. I was sitting on the couch narrating as I tried to get to the page with my application status, and Olivia (my flatmate) was in view, on her bed, freaking out for me.

I called my mom. She happened to be having dinner with my aunt, so I told her too. Then I tweeted. Then I posted on Facebook. (As I write this, I can hear Olivia telling her mom over the phone.) And then I decided we needed to go out. Olivia had wanted to go to the bars anyways, but the people we had originally invited were too busy. So we invited a bunch more to celebrate. Turns out only Casey could join us, but we had a good time anyways.

I'm really excited about this opportunity. It's only a month-long graduate certificate program, but the skills I'll learn there and the contacts I'll make will be invaluable. Another girl in the program saw my tweet/Instagram about getting in and tweeted at me. Turns out I wasn't the only one she tweeted at, so I went and followed her and everyone else she had found who got in. Everyone seems so cool and smart and nice. I really think I'm making the right choice for me, and I'm finally getting excited about life post-Bradley.