UChic Recommends: New York Times' Graduates Blogs

 There’s hardly a day when we aren’t stressing out about our grades, our majors, futures, careers, relationships, and graduation. Enter the Graduates blog from the New York Times, written by eight college seniors on the verge of graduation. These eight seniors, all excellent writers and columnists or editors at their campus newspapers, manage to eloquently and succinctly voice the hopes, fears, and dreams faced by college students everywhere.

Consider Alice Mathias’ thoughts on love in the digital age:

“If we get up the nerve to e-mail or IM our love interests, we can correspond at a comfortable pace (i.e., however long it takes us to come up with witty, well-crafted messages). They will assume we’re taking our time to respond because we’re busy fighting off that parade of knights in shining armor who are begging to be listed with us in a Facebook relationship. They don’t know we’re staring longingly at that one picture that pops up when we Google them, and we don’t have to worry about whether or not they’re staring longingly back! (Bonus: No one has to deal with that awkward “who’s paying?” question.) Flirting has been transformed into a digital process. We don’t even have to touch each other to “hook up.” We can just hook up to the Internet.”

Or consider Anna Weggel’s reflections on the things she’ll miss about college:

“Never having free time. Yep, I said that correctly. What is having a job like when you don’t have endless amounts of homework on top of it? Working 40 hours a week, then going home at the end of the day to just hang out sounds foreign to me. I guess you could say I haven’t learned how to appreciate downtime.”

Sound familiar? The thing that makes the Graduates blog so compelling is how relatable these seniors are. We all deal with the same stresses and fears and hectic lives, and reading about their struggles reminds us that we’re not the only ones—and sometimes reminds us of why we love college so much in the first place.

Check it out—their blog is thoughtful, witty, and often insightful. These seniors write like 35-year-olds but with all the optimism, hope, and uncertainty of every other 22-year-old, and they’re definitely worth reading.

To access the Graduates blog at http://thegraduates.blogs.nytimes.com/ you need to become a member of the New York Times Select, which you can do for free with a “.edu” e-mail address. Sign up for your account at http://www.nytimes.com/gst/ts_university_email_verify.html . Enjoy!

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