Madlen Read: Going home to uncertainty

It was the summer before kindergarten when the cicadas last emerged.

I remember the swarms vividly, and the song I made up at the time: the lyrics were "17-year, 17-year, 17-year cicadas," and the melody was equally complex.

First, a quick explanation for those of you not from the Washington, D.C. region or who are simply too young to remember: The 17-year cicadas are insects, about one-and-a-half inches long, that plague the area for two months every 17 years. This is one of those years.

During the 16 years and 10 months prior, they hibernate underground, beneath the dirt in Rock Creek Park, beneath the manicured lawns in Chevy Chase, beneath the cherry blossoms bordering the Tidal Basin.

If you were brave enough to leave the house during May and June of 1987, the cicadas buzzed around your head and landed on your clothing. At first, their loud chirping kept you awake at night, but as the weeks wore on, you got so used to it that it lulled you to sleep.

By the time my fifth birthday rolled around in July, they were gone, leaving only brittle shells scattered over the sidewalks like dry leaves; the goal of every evening stroll for weeks was to crunch as many as possible.

I tried to imagine myself 17 years from then, when the cicadas would come back. I used my fingers -- six, seven, eight ... 21 years old, almost 22.

The math was hard, let alone picturing myself tall and womanly and finished with school, but I promised myself I'd be in Washington that spring.

So here I am, 17 years later. Not quite as tall and womanly as I'd hoped, but finished with school nonetheless and definitely returning to Washington -- well, Bethesda, Md., now. I'd like to say I'm going home to see the cicadas again, but the real reason is that I don't have a job yet.

Unemployed and living at home isn't exactly what five-year-old Maddy had in mind. Not that I should put much stock in five-year-old Maddy's goals -- she wanted to perform in Broadway musicals. But still, I agree with the kid that the current situation is not ideal. I should be bursting out into the world, living on my own and changing people's lives, not sitting at home filling out job applications and helping Mom pick up the groceries.

I vowed to myself multiple times over the past four years that I would not, could not, move home after graduating from college. I didn't want Mom asking me where I was going every time I left the house. I didn't want to relive senior year of high school vicariously through my brother.

A lot of my friends are in the same boat -- the job market's getting better, but opportunity is taking its sweet time to knock.

Now, I know I'm lucky to have a family that's willing to support me until I can do it myself; being unemployed right now would certainly be scarier if I couldn't go home. I'm also fortunate that home is a city with job opportunities just Metro stops away.

But I still can't shake the feeling that I've failed somehow. And I'm reminded of this on a daily basis, filling out Career Services surveys, fielding queries about post-graduation plans from co-workers at my internship and even writing this column -- which is supposed to offer words of graduate wisdom, but who wants advice from someone with no job?

The only advice I can give to my fellow unemployed graduates is to be patient, because that's the advice I'm taking.

Yes, many of us are going home after 17 long years of schooling, and it feels like falling back to square one. But it shouldn't --we're different people now.

In our four years at Penn, we've grown and evolved. And that Ivy League diploma, whether it really means anything or not, can't hurt.

Plus, we can't be too hard on ourselves now, because I don't think we've hit our peaks yet -- or at least I hope I haven't. At Penn, I've made some great friends, met a couple inspiring professors, wrote a few decent essays and helped put out an award-winning college newspaper. It's been fun and exciting and intense and all, but I think the "best years of our lives" are yet to come.

In the meantime, I'll be back home, writing cover letters, picking up Mom's groceries and flicking cicadas off my sleeves.

I'm pretty confident I'll have things figured out the next time they return.Madlen Read is a senior English major from Bethesda, Md., and former campus news editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. Her e-mail address is madlen@sas.upenn.edu.

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