Delight and revelry once transformed me from a bumbling introvert into an intense and verbose student in all academic settings. Being good at school helped, too, and I delighted in using my brain and reveled in opportunities for creativity. I was content to live as though my one purpose in life was to learn stuff, be smart, and become bosom pals with my teachers. Memorising eight hundred Latin vocabulary words for the AP exam? Fantastic. Doubling my workload by stepping up with #SaveSAO? Amazing. Creating a final project for Middlemarch? Splendid. After spending sixteen-ish years honing my craft as an academic student bursting with creativity and extra-curriculars, it is not without some pride that I say I have had a stellar academic career.

Now, the most creative I can be is figuring out how to format a work-related memo and hope it satisfies my boss. I’ve only touched my watercolours once in the past six months and I’ve only read five books in the same span.  I marvel at the fact that I was once able to get up at 5 a.m. to work out, shower, and get on campus before 8 a.m. I miss the bustle and hustle of being in different places and doing different things. 

I’m in that frustrating place of being a “new” adult with all the hapless flailing and double-guessing that entails. I mean, I know most of the post writers are, given we’re all between the ages of twenty and thirty, so it’s hardly a ground-breaking sentiment. But watching my husband spend five cozy years in his Ph.D. program, I am as envious of his simple academic life (which I know is a gross injustice of an understatement) as I was of all my Calvin peers with clear-cut paths into engineering or nursing or business. I want a sense of stability in my life’s purpose, the reassuring rhythm of learning stuff, being smart, and fraternising with teachers. But secretly, what I really miss is the room for creativity and acuity—the need for it in the day-to-day. I miss it like I would miss my right hand.

Life is full of mediocrities, I know, and sometimes I can accept that. But God, I miss using my brain to do beautiful, meaningful things like literary theory and dance. Now I do mediocre things like the unsatisfactory work of drafting memos and video conferences in order to be the money-maker of the family. I’ve not been feeling very alive or lit up and certainly not creative or brainy. I love my husband and the girls with all of my heart, but I have no creative outlets and I kind of feel trapped and I don’t want to believe that this is going to be adulthood forever, a thick haze of inertia that kills any exuberant sparks and shorts any creative outlets.

I’ve always told myself I was never one to settle and be indeliberate, and I don’t want to settle, but here I am, settling (for now) and trying desperately to be deliberate, somehow. I’ve been trying to make creative outlets for myself—a fancy new DSLR, planning a trip to Spain, grudgingly getting a Kindle, spending more time hanging out with the girls—but it is slow and painful to pry out enough room within the constant mundanity of working and cleaning the apartment and wondering what to cook for dinner.

Anna Jeffries

Anna graduated in 2020 with a degree in mathematics and English literature. Originally from Asheville, North Carolina, she now lives in Washington, D.C. An expert in British murder mysteries and Frasier, Anna likes to read about interesting stuff, jump between hobbies, and rank all the different museum gift shops.