Keeping Things In The Drafts

Because I Don't Have To Have It All Figured Out

I graduate from college in two weeks.

What the fuck.

I don’t think that sentence has fully registered in my body yet. It feels like something I say out loud for dramatic effect, like a line I’m rehearsing rather than a reality I’m about to live through. Two weeks feels both impossibly far away and uncomfortably close — like I’m standing at the edge of something I’ve been walking toward for years without ever really thinking about what happens when I get there.

I visited Tufts a few days after I got my acceptance letter and knew it was where I belonged.

Lately, I’ve been taking inventory of the person I was when I first stepped onto campus. Not in a dramatic, “who was she?” kind of way, but in these quiet, almost accidental moments — catching glimpses of her in old photos, in the way I used to think, in the things I thought I wanted.

I think about her untouched black hair, the sage green moving boxes stacked neatly in my dorm room, the way her face was softer, rounder, less defined by everything that would come next. I think about how carefully she had planned everything: the outfits, the classes, the version of herself she was determined to become. She walked onto campus believing that everything was about to fall into place.

Moving into my freshman dorm!

That her six-year unrequited love would finally see her differently. That she would effortlessly find her people. That she would grow into someone she could be proud of without ever having to question how she got there.

And then I look at myself now — damaged red box-dyed hair, sharper cheekbones, a little more tired and jaded, a little more sure.

And I wonder if she would even recognize me.

Or worse, if she would be disappointed.

Because in so many ways, we are nothing alike. She believed in things I no longer trust. I’ve learned things she never would have imagined needing to know. And if you put us in the same room, I think we’d argue — about love, about ambition, about what it means to be “on track.”

And yet, somehow, we are the same person, which is maybe the strangest part of all.

What’s strange, though, is that I’m not anxious. And that part really scares me.

I think I’ve spent so long equating panic with passion — convincing myself that overthinking meant I cared, that emotional chaos meant something was real. So now, in the absence of that, I don’t know what to call what I’m feeling. For a second, I thought maybe I had become nonchalant. But even that doesn’t feel right.¹

Because if I’m being honest, I don’t think I care less; I care differently.

And maybe that’s one of the biggest things college has taught me. Not branch prediction or priority queues², but how to redefine the things I thought I understood so clearly.

Especially love.

Toward the latter half of my college years, I found myself trying to understand what love actually meant to me. And while the reason I started questioning it wasn’t my favorite, it forced me to realize how narrow my definition had been. I used to think love was something distant, something to chase, something that only counted if it was romantic and reciprocated exactly as I imagined.

But over time, I started to see it differently. As the Patron Saint of Women in Their Twenties, Dolly Alderton, has proclaimed, I realized that love had been around me the entire time — in my friendships, in the quiet consistency of the people who stayed, in the small moments that didn’t demand anything from me except presence. The void I thought I had been trying to fill wasn’t really a void at all. I just hadn’t learned how to recognize what was already there.

And that shift didn’t just apply to love³. It applied to who I thought I was supposed to become.

Before I even stepped onto campus, I had already written out what my college experience was supposed to look like: a fresh start, getting deeply involved in everything I cared about, becoming best friends with my roommate, having perfect grades, building a full and exciting life, and, of course, finding someone who made all of it feel complete. My life felt like a checklist of milestones I needed to complete — not necessarily because they fulfilled me in the moment, but because I had decided, years ago, that they would define success.

And the more I deviated from that plan, the more lost I felt. It was like I had created a version of myself that I felt obligated to become, and when reality didn’t match up, I didn’t know how to recognize who I was without it. It felt like I was failing some invisible contract I had made with my younger self.

But looking back now, I realize something important: I was never that far off.

I just didn’t understand that the path between who I was and who I wanted to be was never meant to be linear — or even clearly defined. Because at its core, all I ever wanted was to find myself.

And I think I’m finally starting to understand that this idea of “finding” myself was never about arriving somewhere final. It’s about becoming. It’s about allowing myself to change, to evolve, to contradict past versions of who I thought I was.

So instead of trying to define everything — love, success, identity — I’m learning to keep all of my definitions as drafts. Not fixed truths. Not final answers. Just working versions of myself that are allowed to grow alongside me.

And when I look at my life now, I can actually see what that growth has given me.

I know what I value. Not in a vague, aspirational way, but in the way I choose how I spend my time, who I surround myself with, and what I’m willing to walk away from. I’ve learned that the most important relationships in my life aren’t the ones I have to prove myself in — they’re the ones that feel steady, mutual, and real. The ones that don’t make me question whether I belong there.

I’ve become more sure of myself, even if that certainty is quieter than I expected. It’s not loud or performative — it doesn’t look like having all the answers. It looks like trusting my own judgment, even when things don’t work out the way I hoped. It looks like knowing that I’ll be okay regardless.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped chasing validation in the places I thought I needed it most. I don’t measure my worth through grades the way I used to. I don’t look for it in the eyes of someone unsure about me. I don’t feel the need to convince people to stay.

And maybe the most surreal part of all of this is that I ended up exactly where I once thought I never could.

I have my dream job.

A version of me, not too long ago, genuinely believed I wasn’t smart enough to get here. That I was somehow faking my way through everything, waiting to be exposed. And yet, here I am — not because I suddenly became someone else, but because I kept showing up as myself, even when I doubted that it would be enough.

I think that’s what this whole process of becoming has taught me.

That I was never lacking — I was just learning.

I graduate from college in two weeks.

And for the first time, I don’t think that’s something to be afraid of.

Because I’m not a finished product.

I’m just a really promising draft — one that I finally trust myself to keep writing.

-xoxo, Amanda

1. It could also totally be the SSRIs I’m taking.

2. I still don’t know what those actually are… But you didn’t hear that from me.

3. If you want to hear my thoughts on this, read pretty much every previous post on my blog.