So it turns out that after you leave school after being a prisoner student for 18 years, a few things happen.
For one, you start to feel like a human being who deserves love and respect as opposed to a withering skin husk filled with dry erase marker fumes and the excuses of a thousand and one terrible group project partners.
You also realize that school prepared you for everything and nothing at the same time. It’s an interesting paradox to be in when you can estimate nonlinear mixed effects models (holla at my almost statistics minor) and how to write and create a kick-ass presentation deck, but you don’t know how to approach the customer service counter to tell the representative that your limited-edition, hand-painted mixer arrived cracked and was therefore unusable. Or maybe that’s just a me problem.
But now I’ve entered the quasi-real world, and I’ve been here for roughly 6 months. I packed up most of my shit, and I moved to the Big Apple, which looks nothing like a large apple from my plane seat window (please laugh at my not-funny dad joke. My fragile, writer self-esteem depends on it). Anyway, I say quasi-real world because I feel like when I enter the true, 100%, no-doubt-about-it, real world will be when I am a true adult.
And I binged watched all four Shrek movies and ate dino nuggets last weekend, so true adulthood has yet to arrive.
The third thing I’ve realized is that I thought I didn’t have energy or time in college to bake (save for the times at two or three in morning when I couldn’t sleep). However, it turns out when you enter the real world and go to work for eight or nine plus hours a day, and occasionally need to work on weekends, then you really have no time or energy. Yes, I could bake on the weekends, but that is time reserved for exploring the city, boozy brunches (does saying that make me basic?), and sleeping.
But this past weekend I was semi-productive and had the energy to try and bake in my teeny-tiny NYC apartment kitchen. So, to my roommates’ delight, I made peppermint merengue cookies in the spirit of the cold weather and holiday season that immediately descended upon us post-Thanksgiving.