The Onion Bagel is a satirical column for The Statesman.
Congrats Class of 2019, you’re done. The nightmares have stopped, you can sleep again. You’ve stopped suffering from prophetic dreams about President Stanley burning your degree at the graduation ceremony. Adulthood awaits!
I get that it all feels a bit overwhelming. You’re a 20-something-year-old in six figures worth of debt. You have a job that pays $12 a fortnight, your parents think you’re a failure and they kicked you out of the house. Then moving day for dormers came and went, and now you’re homeless, with your only refuge being the communal shelter built by Eastern European survivalists near West Apartments. All you see is an endless void where your future should be. Pure, black abyss.
But don’t worry guys — it’ll all be ok.
You’re out in the real world without a paddle, but at least you’re free. You’re going to have to live in a two-bedroom loft with eight of your closest friends (although you hate half of them now) like some kind of tenement in a Brazilian Favela, but your best bud brought his 40-inch TV and his Roku, so you can binge watch all eight seasons of “Burn Notice” just like you always wanted.
Of course, you’ll be nostalgic for all your old friends. They’re all spread out across the country, never to be seen again, because they’re gainfully employed through their connections with the royal family of Surakarta. You’re not talking to your best friend anymore because he hooked up with your ex on your favorite couch, even though you told him six times not to do that.
And since you criticized your favorite professor for coming to class naked and your second-favorite professor died from a heart attack because he was literally too old to teach, you’re officially stuck working your way up the corporate ladder at Arby’s.
But it’s fine! You can finally start paying off that debt, unlike the freshmen who are as screwed as you are by the time 2024 comes around — unless Elizabeth Warren is elected president — then they’ll be fine and have every opportunity you never had!
It’s understandable though, you’re filled with this existential dread about your future and you don’t know what path to take. Your degree gives you options and ironically it makes you more unsure of what to do. Here’s some encouragement for you, from everyone in the same situation.
“I tried going to grad school in California at Stanford, which is my dream school, but because of the Excelsior scholarship the school talked me into taking, now I literally can’t leave this university,” engineer and Stony Brook alumnus Michael McDonough said. “It’s not a big deal, my mentor was going to teach all of my classes at Stanford and he’s connected to the smartest men and women in our field but why would I need to talk to them? WHAT IS A SEAWOLF EVERYBODY?! I AM!”
“They’re gone, they’re all dead, they’re just ashes now,” history major Elena St. Vale said. “They were sacrificed like animals to fuel some kind of eldritch horror. I just switched my major from bio because I wasn’t enjoying it and I walked in mid-way through the semester to find … a HARVEST! IT WAS OBSCENE, IT WAS AN ABOMINATION, THEY DIDN’T DESERVE THAT!”
There you have it! So just keep on swimming, keep your chin up and keep that stiff upper lip. And if you’re wondering how you’re supposed to do all of that at the same time, well guess what — you’re a college grad. You can do anything! We believe in you. Now take on the world with all the might you’ve got, and you should do just fine. Besides, this is the world you were born into, you really can’t do anything else other than try, right?
