Last month, I graduated with my master's degree. And I am still not entirely sure how to describe what that felt like.
Joyful, yes. But also overwhelming in a way I did not fully expect. For weeks leading up to graduation, I was swamped with final projects, and then suddenly, almost without being ready, it was over. There were farewell parties, long lunches and dinners, long conversations over coffee, late-night drinks, and dancing with people I had spent two years building a student life alongside. There were loved ones who traveled to celebrate with me, and I tried my best to be present for all of it: to smile in the photos, to say the right things, and to feel the fullness of the moment.
Then the parties ended. The goodbyes or see you again wrapped up. The people went home. And it was just me in my apartment, surrounded by boxes, packing up the life I had experienced over two years. Moving to a new city. Starting over. It means new people, new environment, new everything.
That is when it really hit me. Finishing graduate school is not just an ending. It is the moment when every major question about your life lands on your doorstep at once. Do you go for a second master’s? Apply for a PhD? Take an internship? Move in with a partner? Get married? Go back home? Travel? And even when some questions feel harder to answer than others, you are expected to have a direction, at least one, even when you are still catching your breath from everything that just happened.
I made some of those decisions. Not all of them, but some. And now, with a little distance and a little quiet, I have been trying to unpack how I made them and what they have taught me about the unavoidable business of choosing in our everyday life. Because we are always choosing. Even before the big decisions show up, we are practicing on the small ones. That is the case I want to make.
Before most of us finish our first cup of coffee or tea, whatever is your taste, we have already made a dozen decisions. What time to get up. Whether the snooze button deserves one more press. What to eat, what to wear, how to commute. These choices feel so automatic that we barely register them as choices at all. But they are. And in a quiet way, they are the foundation of everything else.
The alarm goes off. Do you get up, or do you negotiate with yourself for ten more minutes? You open the fridge – cereal, yogurt, fruit, or your traditional breakfast you sometimes crave? You stand in front of your closet and stare at it like the answer to something important is hanging in there with your clothes. None of these feels significant in the moment.
At some point, the choices stop being about breakfast. They become about where you live, who you love, what work you pour your energy into, and which version of yourself you are trying to grow into. Should I take the opportunity in a new city, or stay close to the people who know me best? Should I stay in this relationship, or trust the restlessness I feel in my chest? And serious ones go on and on and on and on…
I was asking myself versions of all of these questions even in the weeks before graduation while trying to finish everything on time, wondering if I was making the right calls. Wondering if there even were right calls to make.
These are the decisions that keep you up at night. The ones you turn over and over in your mind, hoping that if you examine them long enough, the right answer will finally reveal itself.
Here is what I have come to understand: it usually does not work that way. There is rarely a clear right answer sitting there waiting for you. There is just the choice you make, and then the life that grows out of it.
And of course, everything, everything, has consequences.
Some of them are good. You take the risk, and it works out. You move somewhere new, and it slowly starts to feel like home. You bet on yourself, and the bet pays off. These are the moments you look back on with warmth, grateful that you were brave enough or maybe just bold enough to say yes.
But some consequences are harder than you expected. The decision that felt right at the time quietly reveals its cost. The path you chose closes off other paths. You lose something in the process, or someone, and you sit with the weight of that, wondering if you made a mistake or whether this is simply what it means to be a person navigating a life that does not come with a map.
The truth, I think, is that it is usually both at once. Most real choices carry a little of each.
What I keep returning to is not whether I chose correctly. It is how I chose and how I have learned to carry the outcomes, whatever they turn out to be.
Was I deciding from a place of genuine desire, or from fear? Was I listening to what I actually wanted, or to what I thought I was supposed to want? Was I following my own instincts, or drowning them out with everyone else's opinions and expectations? Was I leading only with my heart, or only with my head?
And when the consequences came, the good and the difficult alike, could I face them honestly? Could I own the outcome without collapsing under guilt, or drifting away on pride? Could I learn something, adjust, and keep going?
That last part, keeping going, might be the most important thing of all.
Because you will not always choose well. To me, I know I have not and I will not, all the time. You will pick the wrong door sometimes. You will stay too long or leave too soon. You will say yes when you should have said no, and no when you should have said yes. That is not failure. That is just being human.
What defines us is not the perfection of our choices. It is the honesty with which we make them, the grace with which we accept their consequences, and the willingness to keep choosing again and again, even when the outcome is far from certain.
Graduation was a month ago. I am still settling in. Still figuring things out. Still hopeful and still praying. Some days I feel clear and grounded. Other days, I wake up, and the questions are all back, lined up and waiting.
But every morning, I make choices about whether to get up, what to eat for breakfast, and whether I want a strong or a soft coffee.
And to me, somehow, that still feels like enough of a place to start.
What about you?
