Over the past few weeks I've had several conversations with different people about the idea of graduating college and ending up exactly where we started.
I just want to say that that cycle of thinking is not only destructive but flat out wrong. Really? Even if you had lived in a cardboard box, shut off from the rest of the world, you would still emerge paler and more socially awkward. People change in 4 years. That is the nature of time and air pollution. So consequently, even if we're in the same relative position that we were in 4 years ago (the bottom) it's impossible for us to be in the actual same position. We know more, about ourselves and about the world. We have access to opportunities that we couldn't have dreamed of four years ago. We understand the world differently.
And even if we return to the same geography that we grew up in, It doesn't mean that we suddenly and immediately regress. On some fronts, sure. But you would switch opinions on some things if you went anywhere. The necessity of a winter coat, the appropriateness of taco meat on your pizza, EDM, for just a few examples. We change our minds, and it's ok if we change them back on some of the small things. But I maintain, moving back home does not mean that you become your 18 year old self. Because seriously, if the 18 year old version of yourself is better than your current version in any way besides maybe being more hopeful then my recommendation to you is not to go home but to spend a year in the Australian outback reevaluating how you make life choices. Seriously, just go now. Because moving home is only going to work if you feel comfortable with the person you've become. And you feel comfortable seeking out new opportunities and outlets in your original neck of the woods.
But something that's extremely important to remember is that you do have to change. The next 4 years of your life are not any more static than the last. New experiences and opportunities are going to throw us, and to try to hang on to the exact version of yourself that existed the moment you accept your degree is a dangerous but effective way to prevent yourself from experiencing anything or growing at all. Be open to the newness of the next stage, especially in places we've been before.
Freshman year my favorite professor botched a Heraclitus quote, and I've always liked his improvised version better: "you can never step in the same river twice. Just as the river was, so it is not. Just as you were, so you are not."
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