Overland Park, KANSAS - The last time I saw my new home, a modest two-bedroom garden apartment in suburban Washington, D.C., was about a month ago, when the air still rang with the sound of crickets. The closest thing to that out here in the Kansas City hotels is the whir of icemakers and air conditioning, though once in a while you might really hear the tumbleweed roll.
The 70-hour weeks haven't been so rough, I say with hang-dog eyes. It's not even getting to the office at 4:30 in the morning, every day, sometimes six days a week. It's the loneliness that sucks the most. That and the strange, awful feeling that's plagued me every day since leaving Duke: What on earth am I doing with my life?
Pardon the narcissism-I hate writing in the first-person. But while I can't decide completely how I feel, just shy of six months past the Gothic Wonderland, I write in this more personal way out of hope: Life after Duke, I swear to you, is great. It's what I tell myself a lot, at least, and I do think it's basically true. But, well, it is hard, too. Very hard.
Right now, for reasons unclear to me, I'm a "consultant," whatever that means, though it seems to entail getting paid more in "glamour" and "experience" than money to sit at a computer and grow fat and blind. Technically, I'm a "junior associate of program management." And yes, I did major in English.
But although the work-which I can't really talk about in particulars-is rather dull, the people here are all friendly, hard-working and often inspiring. I come to work most days with a smile on my face, and even if it's sagging somewhat by late afternoon, I still feel lucky to be here.
The travel has been equal parts exhilaration and exhaustion. Aside from Kansas, I've been in the past three weeks to Arlington, Va.; Columbus, Ohio; Milwaukee, Wis.; and New York City. I really do live out of a suitcase, or, rather, two of them, both falling apart, and a laptop bag. I would have been at Homecoming if I didn't find out a day before it that I had to work. The upcoming itinerary, I hope, will include Berkeley, Calif.; Eugene, Ore.; Boston and maybe Chicago.
Two of the directors onsite here have had heart attacks since we started work. The job for our client involves 24 hours a day of computer programming, farmed out from Kansas to Reston, Va.; Dallas and India, where three-quarters of our 4,000-odd employees work (most of the American 1,000 were also born there).
Most days, when I'm not on a conference call or a meeting with the directors or the client, I make reports in Excel and PowerPoint. For some crazy reason, I get to tell the programmers, who are about 10 to 20 years older than me, what I want them to do.
Most evenings, when I'm not at work, I choose between dinner and sleep. The former I do not pay for, thanks to a corporate AmEx, but the latter pays for itself. I haven't really seen much of the sun, since I get to work before dawn and leave after dusk. The rest of the time I sit in a cubicle. (They didn't show me those on the sell day, seniors.)
A good night here is getting a free shot of tequila from the American Bandstand waitress while dining on the company steak. A bad night is the rest of them. Well, not quite: I've had a few fun times exploring the town-and I usually fly gratis to visit friends around the country on weekends. But most of the higher-ups here apologize a lot when they see us young folk, and I've heard about a dozen times that "this really isn't the typical project, things really just got out of control this time."
I could go on. Life here is really tough, but the reason I'm writing all this to you is this: I think it's OK. In fact, most of my friends from Duke are having a tough time too. It's just a hard thing to do, leaving college-and it's OK if the door hits you on your way out. Unless you're a once-in-a-generation superstar, you're probably going to stumble, at least a little bit. So be ready for it.
I have an escape plan: It's called a dream. I'm sure going to follow mine no matter where I might be at the moment. My biggest piece of advice would be to make sure you don't ever lose sight of yours. If you bring the right attitude, too, you can get through just about anything.
And let me know if you want a postcard from Kansas City.
Andrew Gerst, a former managing editor of Towerview, graduated from Trinity in 2006. He now lives and works in Washington, D.C. His column runs every other Wednesday.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.