Who am I?

Graduation season has come and gone. Recent graduates either have jobs or have settled back in to their parents’ basements. Regardless, they’re ready to go out in to the real world.

This year, I’ve joined those graduates. After eleven long years, I’m fully validated as an individual ready to conquer life.

Stop. Look left. Look right. But there’s not a street to cross. There’s nothing there. There’s no cars, no trees, no dogs peeing on fire hydrants. Just two tunnels with big, open possibilities on either side. Or maybe they converge at the end.

I spent my eleven year long journey to holding a Bachelors of Arts in English developing an identity in offices across two states. The only time I didn’t hold a “real” job was my first semester as a college freshman. After that, it was classic skirts and pinstripe pants and cardigans and casual Fridays. It’s a life so many college graduates just can’t figure out how to slip in to after four years of pajamas and band t-shirts being acceptable every day. Not to mention the work ethic and inability to always just make it up later.

How, then, is it that I’m sitting here with a degree in my hand and yet I’m still lost? I have the validation from an institution coupled with the experience and work ethic of an accomplished professional. This should be easy, right?

Of course it’s not. It’s hard. And, it’s harder for me because I’ve spent the last eleven years developing two identities.

School let me develop one identity alongside a passion: reading and writing and writing about reading and writing. Classes taught me to develop characters on paper and analyze their actions to discover a deeper meaning about the world. It taught me why i comes before e except after c and the difference between using and not using the Oxford comma. I learned to navigate bureaucracy and to not stop asking for help until I received the help that I needed, not just the help others wanted to give. I learned perseverance and that work can indeed be fun.

But school wasn’t the only part of my eleven year long excursion to receiving a diploma. I worked the entire time to support myself and my family. I worked in a position completely unrelated to  my degree (accounting) and put numbers in columns and told people how much money to pay the government and when they needed to do it. I moved to the private sector and did the same thing, this time in my industry, at a bookstore, for a year and a half before being laid off. Six months later, I found myself once again keeping books, this time for an advertising agency in Nampa, Idaho.

But, while my job title has always indicated a deep level of familiarity with which numbers should go in which columns, my duties have always encompassed more. My attention to detail and my understanding of the English language has lead to me doing quite a bit of copyediting and even some copywriting. Everything from advertising copy and press releases to emails to the boss have been scrutinized by my eye for not just periods and commas but also for subtler meaning and understanding, and ensuring the message conveys the totality of the writer’s intent. I’ve spent hours preparing and executing trainings of all varieties, from learning a system and becoming an expert to sharing my knowledge and expertise with numbers and words and everything in between. I’ve done the mundane: answer phones and order supplies and make copies. I’ve done the complex: build and re-build manuals and instructions to stand the test of time.

My title, either work or school, doesn’t even begin to touch on my abilities.

I’ve one one battle: I’ve earned my degree. There’s pictures of it on the internet. Now, it’s time to win the next, and reconcile my two identities fully. Here I go.