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[quote=Anonymous]I feel weird posting this, but I just discovered this forum last night. I'm about to graduate college next week (!!!), and I feel like my parents (a progressive social worker and an English professor at a community college) did not do a good job of preparing me for adulthood. Compared to my peers, I feel a lot more sheltered and just behind in life.

I guess I'm just reflecting on college in general now that I'm graduating in one week. On paper, it seems like college went really well for me -- I majored in English at a SLAC, am graduating with the top award in my department and super high GPA, have amazing relationships with my professors, and just finished up my year as the Editor-in-Chief of my school's newspaper. I'm starting a journalism internship next month in the same city where I currently live.

But finances, now that I'm starting to realize, are a constant stressor for me in a way that it isn't for my peers. I almost wish I chose a more lucrative major, even though I really do love English and writing in general. I resigned the lease on my house and can't find anyone who wants to live with me after graduation (because I live with a lovely but neurotic rescue dog I adopted last year). I cannot afford to pay for rent in my house by myself on a meager part-time journalism stipend, so I'm really stressed about finding roommates starting next month. I'm graduating with $40k in student loans, which thankfully, my mom agreed to pay off for me (but I still feel guilty about burdening her with this). I'm preparing to apply to MFA programs in Creative Writing next year, but I don't even know what you can do with an MFA -- academia is falling apart.

I made some really poor choices in friends and boyfriends in college, so my primary social group throughout college fell apart in the middle of my junior year, and now I feel like I don't really have a support system, which really sucks. The two friends who have lived with me in the past both screwed me over and didn't end up paying rent (in retrospect, this was 100% predictable, but I was too naive and sheltered to realize it), and my mom ended up covering their portion of the rent. My best friend throughout college was just outed last week as a lying sociopath (which was also predictable, but my head was buried too deep into the sand until it was too late).

I really don't have any tight support system except my rescue dog (who I adore more than anyone else in the world) and my professor/thesis advisor (who I'm also starting to be wary of because he hits on female students and cheated on his wife, another prof in the English department, with an alum). I just feel so lost, and I feel like my ultra-liberal, "do what makes you feel good" parents did not prepare me for either the financial or the emotional realities of adulthood.

Sigh. Anyone else in this situation?[/quote]

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