I’m excited to set off on that grand adventure called adulthood, live my life to the fullest, and make my own tracks. Goshen is mine for the housekeeping as soon as I walk across that stage, get my diploma mailed to me in June and pay off those loans.

My dream is to jump headfirst into the shimmering pool of adulthood, and bathe in the cool, refreshing water of a respectable routine. I will wake up bright and early, work enough to pay the rent, then come home and do the dishes before I go to bed by nine so I can wake up and make breakfast for my housemates, or maybe even (my pulse flutters at the thought) 8:30.

What are my post-college plans, you ask? I want to be a homemaker.

I’ve heard some of my friends talking about their plans to “travel” the “world” or “do service,” but I’m perfectly content to settle down at home with my fish, houseplants and some poor, poor folks still tethered to the chains of academia. They will learn more and more about less and less. I’ll be free to weed the garden, keep the floors swept and scrub the bathroom. Maybe I’ll even join a church committee.

I should have majored in home economics.

I might save up to buy a used Corolla or Accord* so I can easily take care of household grocery shopping, adopt more household plants, and take the household vacuum cleaner in for its biennial belt replacement. Keeping house will give me reason to run errands. I’ll check The Depot for doilies, Walgreens for water filters and find leisurely loans at the library.

Yes, the life of the home suits me just fine for now. Thank you, professors, for your encouragement that I attend graduate school, but I think I’ll just stick to my plan to graduate from school. I’ll sit in a favorite chair, sip tea and pen poems like this:

O, domesticity’s singular bliss

Is perhaps better yet than a kiss

So why’d I attend college?

For to get all this knowledge,

And to scrub yonder throne of your ____.

Then I’ll sort the recycling.

*Please note: The author does not actually plan to purchase an automobile. Cars are filthy, cancer-causing polluters that lure us away from a quiet, contented life at home. All my errands can be done by bike.