Social life really changes once you graduate from college. One moment, you’re surrounded by people all your own age who share the same interests and a common experience. The next, you’re in a workplace surrounded by people who are decades older than you in a town you don’t know. You lose the ease and accessibility of familiar people — just like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I recognize that this is not the situation for all college graduates. Certainly I’m not facing such a severe case; I work with people probably all age 25 to 40, in a college town (not my own), with a few contacts in the area. I’m not completely alone. But still, when you’re used to being always around others, it can feel lonesome confronting such a great increase in alone time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To combat my loneliness, I haven’t turned to my peers so much as “real” adults. I just had lunch and a beer with my college career counselor and his wife. I go hiking weekly with my dad’s old work pal. I visit my high school best friend’s parents on the weekends regularly. And it’s great — it’s just strange. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One would think I would get along with people my own age better and would rather spend time with my cohort. And it’s true that these “adults” in my life won’t be able to relate to me in every single way the way my peers would. But I find that I value spending time with people my own age just as much as people my parents’ age. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve always thought myself very close with my home and my parents. Naturally, we had our conflicts, particularly when I was high school. I went to college very excited for new experiences, but genuinely homesick and missing my parents regularly. As my college years went by, I came to realize that I not only missed and loved my parents — I missed and loved hanging out with them, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you age and become closer to “adulthood” (whatever the heck that means), you start having more and more in common with your parents. You can sit and have a Moscow mule with them. You can talk about health care options. You can gush over your farmers’ market finds together. It’s fantastic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I like hanging with “real” adults because they’re adults that I admire and wish to emulate. And they have a heck of a lot of wisdom to share. It may seem strange, but when I consider how much I enjoy spending time with these people, I realize it’s not strange at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I just have to make sure I spend some<\/em> time with people my own age … or I’ll become a “real” adult myself. And that would be unacceptable. \ud83d\ude09 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Social life really changes once you graduate from college. One moment, you’re surrounded by people all your own age who share the same interests and a common experience. The next, you’re in a workplace surrounded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ponderings"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1535"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1536,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1535\/revisions\/1536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}