Soy Parmesan Cheddar Macaroni

Ingredients: Macaroni Wheels, Butter, Flour, Parmesan, Sharp Cheddar, Soy Milk, Sea Salt, Black Pepper.

  

Tangy Tuna Rotini

Ingredients:  Rotini, White Tune, Olive Oil, Diced Tomatoes, Onions, Garlic, Cilantro, Soy Milk, Parmesan Cheese, Sea Salt, Black Pepper. 

Dare-Deviled Eggs

     

Ingredients:  Hard-boiled Eggs, Finely-chopped Onions, Red Bell Peppers, Cilantro, Stoneground Mustard, Olive Oil, Mayonnaise, Sea Salt, Black Pepper, Smoked Paprika.    

 

Beer-broth Pea Soup

Ingredients:  Sweet peas, potatoes, onions, butter, garlic, beer, and black pepper.  Topped with parmesan. 

So people have a lot of boring things to say about post-college life.  They bitch about the mind-numbingness of the  9-to-5, they remind you that you have to 'pay your bills' and they usually inform you that office jokes and happyHour become highly-valued forms of sustenance.   After only a few months they use phrases like, "God what I would give to be a student again" or "Whew...I gotta get out 'here'...back into 'the field'...I wanna travel".  Sure, all of these are true.  Especially the deep-seated insecurities that your degree is apparently useless and that a general lack of desired direction stare up at you from your second cup of mediocre coffee every morning.  But there's a few things that people don't tell you - or certainly never told me - about post-college life.

Firstly, it's all about pleasure and balance.  For the first time in a long time your life is punctuated by shifts. Yea, this is rotten considering the human body and psyche simply isn't designed for 8-hour shifts BUT it also means that from a bit after 6p until a bit after 8a the next day, you are more or less free from all 'work-related' responsibilities.  This liberation is intensified around 5p on Friday for what follows is usually a genuine weekend.  The key is filling those between-work hours with as much pleasure and balance as possible.  Which given your regularly arriving paychecks, is quite easy to do.

Additionally,

You get to feel calm and secretly superior when mid-October rolls around and it is simply mid-October and not midterms.

And even if you join the cattle heard on the daily 'commute', you get to pleasure-read while doing. You realize you haven't used the word syllabus in ages.  And you yet remarkably you STILL learn something  new - several things, actually, and they're usually quite practical - everyday.