With completion of my undergraduate degree and my hiatus
between under grad and graduate, I learned something about myself. I am a
classic millennial…sort of.
Having that downtime, using it to simply work to save money
for school, explore my creative interests – areas that my mother always
fostered willingly and was a wealth of knowledge in (a true jack of all trades
and master of most!) - open Sugar’Stache, and become a creative like so many of
my generation let me find what I now know to be my passion. How am I
classically a millennial? I have an undergraduate degree in a field that I’m
not necessarily my happiest in, and even given its potential for prestige and a
sturdy career, with the dizzy economy and job scarcity even in the scientific
arena, my Bachelor’s has barely done me any good in application to
‘stepping-stone’-type job opportunities. Now being back in school and under the
pressure - not of deadlines for assignments or due dates for assessment - but
the expectation to re-join the scientific community as a contributing,
thoughtful member, I find myself yearning desperately for a bag of Sharpies and
a blank slate; a glue gun, a bag of broken jewelry, and a handful of barrettes,
sunglasses, and other adorn-ables; a paint brush and a thrifted old clock or
chair to breathe a second, beautiful, creative life into.
Only when we are on the other side is the grass such a
vibrant shade of emerald that it can tear at our passionate heartstrings and,
in fact, teach us things about ourselves and our world that we never would have
realized otherwise.
All of that time on my break I thought I was bored.
Certainly, more could have been done to spice life up, but now I find myself
desperate for another day in that life, not with the lazy nights spent
half-asleep on the couch, half-involved in Pinterest or on a blog admiring
brilliant ideas and noting inspiration for another project, but for the ability
to just go into my craftroom on any occasion and yank out some old findings to
turn into new treasures. In the face of piles of research papers to be read and
notated and the stomach-churning knowledge that the next day, and the next day,
and the next day I will be expected to raise my voice in only a scientific
manner, I find that I have found my true passion, and must now come to terms
with having to put it on the back burner.
I tell myself that I can use that passion as a stress relief
from the scientific static, and I will. Frustrated with an experiment, a
calculation gone astray, a bad peer review? Here’s a brush pen and a blank
sheet of paper, have at it. And that will be my recourse. But I know that while
it may satisfy a temporary need to let off steam, it will always yank harder at
the desperate desire to spend day in and day out being a creative, DIY-ing til
I drop, baking and recipe testing and learning new crafting skills via youtube
video, blasting from my iPhone whilst my mother clumsily fiddles with new
tools, new mediums.
I hope it sparks small joy for me and brings me focus to
finish my academic foray as fast as possible. I hope it brings me the lucrative
future it was always promised to before reality sunk in and standards for
hiring soared while the economy and the job market plunged. I hope the creative
cravings never leave me. Because when I complete me degree and am secure in a
career that will allow me the funding to forget the science and follow my
heart, you’d better watch for this accidentally classic millennial. She’ll be a
crafting, chocolatier spitfire with more ideas than one blog can contain, more
passion than one craftroom can cradle, and more life than one can ever imagine.
