By Daniel Milyavsky
I graduated from Bing this past May, and I was the editor of this lofty publication for a year and a half. I’m in medical school now, and I’d like to let my dear readers know what post-grad life is like. I’ve been living it for several months now, so obviously I’m an expert and what I write will mirror your experience exactly (I was going to put a disclaimer that what I write applies only to me, but I figured I’d write something sarcastic instead, since this is the Review, after all).
I’ll start off with the things I miss. The main one is my closest friends. In college, I hung out with them almost every single day, and we had a ton of free time. Since Binghamton has 16,000+ students, I was able to be friends with people who I clicked extremely well with and shared my political views. I look back fondly on drinking beer on my Samson’s porch, playing Call of Duty with Jack, or talking about how everything sucks with Luke. I obviously miss being able to shit on Pipe Dream in Press Watch.
I don’t really miss the party scene. Honestly, it’s kind of a relief to never have to go into an extremely crowded bar blasting music that I would never listen to on my own. I also don’t miss being surrounded by people I don’t know whenever I walk around campus. There are 132 people in my medical school class, and it’s nice that I can actually recognize most people at house parties.
Although medical school is still school, it’s pretty cool that I’m finally learning things that I will put into use as a physician. We cut out a cadaver’s heart the very first week of medical school, and a month later we were holding a person’s brain in our hands. The other day, my dad complained to me of pain in his lower left quadrant, and was asking me if it was his spleen. “No dad,” I explained, “your spleen is on your left mid axillary line, deep to the 9th, 10th, and 11th ribs. It’s higher up. You’re touching the part of your body around your descending colon.”
God, I sound so boring! You don’t give a shit where your spleen is! I guess that’s what happens when you spend more time talking about school work than making fun of Bernie Sanders. Medical school is a lot of work, and I definitely had to adjust to a much greater workload than I had in undergrad, but I actually like the people here much more than I thought I would. My housemates are great, and life really isn’t too bad.
I remember when I was Editor-in-Chief, I published an article that was also written by a former editor, but he was a lot more pessimistic than I am about graduating, since his career plans didn’t work out for a little bit, and he was very involved in undergrad. He’s fine now, and he’d probably write a very different article. At the time I thought when I graduated I’d also write a post-grad article, and here I am.
I’m not going to pretend to be some kind of wise old sage, and I’m not going to give you some grand piece of advice to guide you, because I can’t do that, and I don’t really think anyone can. I will say that a lot of what you do in college that’s unrelated to your future career isn’t as important as you think it is at the time. You’ll graduate, you’ll forget most of it pretty quickly, and you’ll start the next stage of your life. I remember when I was editor of the Review, I wondered why former editors didn’t try harder to get more involved with the Review. I get it now. Undergrad is a very unique thing, and once you move on, it’s pretty difficult to relate to it.
So cultivate your interests and friendships, and think seriously about what you want to spend the rest of your life doing. Get involved with the Review! Write a funny article satirizing some aspect of campus life. It’ll be good!