When I graduated from college, it was with the understanding that good things were just waiting around the corner for me.
Moving to my first real apartment, naturally furnished with only the very latest IKEA gear, I expected to quickly immerse myself in a life filled with extra-foam lattes and the Sunday Washington Post. I expected things previously lost on me to gain new meaning. Modern art. Articles in The New Republic. That banner of numbers and symbols that flashes across the bottom of your screen during MSNBC broadcasts. Cooking.
With all of this talk about graduation being a "passage," I assumed I would gracefully exit the world of keg parties -- however one might do that -- to make an entrance into the realm of all things refined and adult. As this "adult," I would sprint up the corporate ladder in my Ann Taylor pumps, happily entering full-blown young professional bliss. I'd go for spirited jogs with my pet Pomeranian and have conversations with my co-workers, who would use fancy terms like "cathexis" and "postmodernist construct" while they nibbled baby spinach and goat cheese salad at lunchtime.
Isn't that what life for a young college graduate entering the work force is like? Based on my own experience, apparently not.
What was in fact waiting for me, after that stupidly hopeful cap-toss, was little more than a dead-end job. Packaged as a position with growth opportunity at a "dynamic Internet start-up" during my interview, my job was actually at a sad little company run by a bunch of retired old farts.
As the only person in the office without a pacemaker and with no real clients, days in my dim cubicle were spent scouring the Internet for the latest gossip on J. Lo.
Evenings were split evenly between the men in my life: the Iron Chef and David Letterman.
"You need to get out more!" my fellow alum friends would cry. This generally meant I'd tag along with them for an evening at the local watering hole. After the last wing had been licked clean and we'd had enough soda refills, all would be ready to call it a night. At 10 p.m.
Enter graduate school.
I'll admit that, given all this, my decision to go back to school wasn't made for entirely "intellectual" reasons. I saw it as a chance to inject some much needed vitality into my life. I missed the energy and buzz that had pervaded the classrooms, dormitories and even the streets of my undergraduate campus.
I wanted to be learning again, reading again but, importantly, I also wanted to meet new people. As far as I was concerned, the "real world" I had come across had a serious dearth of active, conversation-abled folks.
An acceptance letter from Penn really had me excited. A university: a gold mine of intelligent, spirited youth, not yet jaded by life, not yet bogged down by routine; a community of dedicated, active learners. The possibilities!
I've been here for just over a year now and although I'm still thrilled to be at Penn, I am a bit let down by the lack of interaction grad students have with one another. I understand that we are here primarily to gain a depth of knowledge or to advance our careers, but can't we have some fun while we're at it?
Last year, I went to a number of Graduate and Professional Student Assembly functions. Though usually well-attended, they were unfortunately reminiscent of junior high school dances. Looking around I'd wonder why these little departmental cliques could find little to say to one another. Awkward hoverings around the punch bowl and tight circles of conversation were, instead, the norm.
I personally don't recall anyone I went to those things with talking to somebody they didn't already know.
Given the wealth of great, interesting folks we could all be potentially meeting, why limit ourselves like this?
The Penn graduate and professional student communities consist of isolated islands of people. Rarely do we break out of our little corners to explore socially, and intellectually, the students with whom we share this campus.
But that doesn't have to be the case. If the grad student representatives across campus put their heads together, they can work to connect Penn grad students beyond the limits of individual departments.
Organizing socials and other events to bring students together from all departments and schools would mix up the community more effectively than the long-stale GAPSA mixer.
The most enjoyable event I went to last year was one that had students from three schools -- two professional and one graduate -- socializing with one another.
Creative programming for graduate students by graduate students is the key here. Believe me when I say that it is a social desert out there. Let's make our time at Penn meaningful in as many ways as we can.
Hilal Nakiboglu is a second-year doctoral student in Higher Education Management from Ankara, Turkey.
