Journal / 2014-05-19

Real Life

Well, tomorrow I begin real life – or at least that is what they seem to call it. But what does that make the past twenty some years of my life? Were they fake? I hope not. It would be pretty depressing if the life I have been leading was fictitious.

Real life, though. What does that even mean? Is it the transition from a paying student to a paid employee? Perhaps. But I think that depends on one’s definition of student. To be clear, I fully intend to continue learning despite the completion of my “formal” education – you know, the past seventeen years of schooling from elementary to middle, high school through college. Good times.

Alright, before you freak out because of what could be considered a sarcastic comment ridiculing our education system, calm down. Sure, there was a little sarcasm in there, but you have to understand where I am coming from. I have been in school for the past seventeen years of my life. Now, I am making it seem like a bad experience and that was certainly not the case. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at North Allegheny and the University of Pittsburgh. It’s just time to move on.

But back to the meaning of “real life”. Perhaps it has something to do with the change in expected responsibility. I feel like in some cases, one’s status as a student is used as an excuse for irresponsibility. I don’t mean to say that I have been personally irresponsible, but there’s something to be said about the comfort of a student in which one is expected to fulfill the predefined requirements. And by requirements, I am referring to a relatively broad set of conditions. Obvious example: attend a four-year college. Seriously, everyone does it nowadays – even if you don’t know what the heck you want to do with your life. But I don’t want to get too sidetracked, so I’ll save that conversation for another day.

Point being: real life does not have a predefined set of requirements. There is no graduation progress report that lets you know how you are doing in your career path through life. I have to be honest, I am a bit nervous about that aspect in particular, but I’m convinced that is normal. All I can hope for is that I will know what to do when presented with a challenge, and I will be able to make the best choice for that point in my life. Honestly, as long as I am learning with a talented group of people who are collectively working on an interesting problem, I am going to be happy.

At this point in my life, the best choice was to stay in Pittsburgh and return to The Resumator, a mid-size startup company that aims to bring together talented professionals and compelling companies via their applicant tracking system and recruiting software. A lot has changed at The Resumator since I interned with them two summers ago. They now have some fifteen engineers on the team, and they recently opened a marketing/sales office in San Francisco. I could not be more excited to get back to working with them!

One of my goals as I begin the next phase of my life involves regular blogging. I think part of the problem has to do with the fact that I have several distinct blogs that make it difficult to aggregate. Ideally, I would like to try and merge these into a central blog with different topics/categories, but I think that’s easier said than done. I would like to do a lot of things – including a complete redesign of this site. But there is only so much time in the day.

At any rate, here’s to living a life that is led by nothing but one’s wildest imaginations. Things are about to get real.