If I could have, I never would have graduated from college. But then Marti and Tim gently reminded me that if I wanted to be a super senior, 100% of the funds were on me and all of the nonexistent money I racked up from my unpaid internships – so 4 years it was! It’s been Season 1 of my own personal Real World, and through these trying times, I’d like to think I’m older and maybe, possibly a teensy bit wiser. (Okay, probably not.)
My findings from out in the field:
1. The world is getting smaller
Sometimes, when I’m out in LA being young, wild, and free as white girls have been known to do, I’m under the impression that I could lie to randoms or do something absolutely ridiculous/pull a Miley and no one would ever know. This is false.
Acquaintances are everywhere I turn – whether it’s a 3-story gay club in Hollywood or the Trader Joe’s down on Bellflower. No longer can I pretend my name is Sapphire J. Bernstein or that I’m Natalie Portman’s less famous but much more well-rounded sister – because 5 minutes later there will always be a “Hey Arianna!” to shatter the facade. Then the stranger becomes confused (“Arianna? I thought your name was Esmeralda Portman?”) and from there it inevitably gets messy… not that I would know from personal experience. Ahem.
Even at a random apartment complex in downtown LA, the stranger taking the 2 am elevator ride with me and Jules happened to be from our hometown, El Dorado Hills. (You may know El Dorado Hills as “hell.”) Same high school, only a grade below us – he claimed to recognize Julie yet wasn’t familiar with the timeless icon that is myself. (To this day I remain offended and a little bit confused.)
My conclusion? Nothing you do is ever anonymous, not really. Everything is just too public and everyone too connected – although I guess that doesn’t stop people from committing murders and having affairs and listening to Nickelback on Spotify. It should, though.
2. Drinking is a whole new ballgame
This ain’t USD anymore, where I was a seasoned veteran thriving amongst the crummiest dive bars Mission Beach had to offer. Now? Even taking a whiff of Peppermint Schnapps gets me blacked out until next Tuesday. I must admit the denial was strong for a while. I tried ignoring the signs until hangovers started spanning days at a time and more and more situations arose in which my behavior was nowhere near socially acceptable.
Case in point: when one night at an Irish pub it only took me a few glasses of Moscato, rather than my usual five, to offend everyone in the immediate vicinity. This included meeting a guy who bore a striking resemblance to Ansel Elgort, the male lead in The Fault in Our Stars, a movie about two terminally ill teenagers falling in love (or so I hear- I strictly avoid any and all storylines that cause you, as the professionals would say, to “feel things”).
In all honesty, it probably would have been a nice thing to say – if I had said that. I did not. In my delirious dessert wine state, the words that came out were instead:
Me: “You. Hey you. You look like that one guy – the kid with cancer? Yeah, that’s you. Cancer kid. You have cancer. You’re the kid with cancer.”
Jules (through gritted teeth): “Stop telling that kid he has cancer.”
Me: “What I’m TRYING to say is-”
long pause
“… uh, cancer?”
I didn’t make many new friends that night.
3. We’re adults now?
Technically, it’s on your 18th birthday that you become a legal adult and can do all those crazy things like voting and opening up checking accounts. You know, really get wild. But it wasn’t until I was dressed up in my oh-so-flattering cap and gown that it truly hit me that I was on my own. (See below.)
It further occurred to me there are expectations and norms to abide by as an adult when I created my Facebook postgrad album. I realized that my past album titles (Dicking Around Europe and Blacked Out So Hard I Need Lumos, for my Madrid and London study abroad escapades, respectively) and intended new one – Blacking Out Before the Party Even Starts #helenkellerproblems – weren’t in, how you would say, ‘good taste.’ I suddenly had this foreign sense of needing to censor myself and I didn’t like it one bit.
4. Everyone and everything falls apart
Horrified yet? Okay, the truth: while I may not exactly be rolling in hundis yet, I thoroughly enjoy my marketing job and the fact that I get paid to do graphic design and occasionally plan company ragers – my life’s two passions. But let’s exaggerate for the sake of keeping things dramatic. All of my graduated classmates are either A) jobless and living in their parents’ basement like some sort of dungeon troll or B) clocking in 80+ hour work weeks and self-medicating with coke and long, sad baths.
My first Homecoming weekend in San Diego reaffirmed this by being the hottest 2-day mess of my life. In those 48 hours, I witnessed: four girls sobbing on the streets of Mission Bay/Bae, three couples arguing in public, one girl cheating on her boyfriend as he stood next to her, one episode of the po-po getting called, and more poor life decisions than I can count. Also one girl shamelessly double-fisting two Sara’s burritos while still in her clothes from the night before. Wait, no, that may have been me. Yeah, that was definitely me. Moving on.
Unsurprisingly, that weekend I also learned that the student body has been experimenting with a new drug that is a combination of molly and acid. This has consequently led to campus-wide chaos.
5. There’s always a bright side
Sure, you may be stealing company office supplies and still mooching off your ex’s Netflix account, but it’s not all bad news bears for us millennials. Being an adult – or young professional, as I prefer to be called – has taught me that with enough confidence, you can convince anyone of anything.
Personally, this is a life lesson I’ve reserved to snagging VIP tables at clubs, but I’m sure you could even trick others into believing you’re happy/funny/smart/not obviously balding/etc. – different strokes for different folks. Being an adult has taught me that your options are limitless – also that premade sangria is a real game-changer – but for now, let’s focus on the limitless opportunities.
So what sort of options are we talking here? For my first highlight from 2015, I’ll give you the best (and by best, I mean only) anecdote I’ve got.
The Art of Being Basic 