Driving into the Open Future

This column is a part of the 2011 Senior Section's Moving On Into the Real World series.

In the year that has passed since I turned in the key to my Adams House suite, I have lived in three different states, driven across the country one and a half times, racked up several thousand frequent flier miles, and slept nearly as many nights on an air mattress as I have in a normal bed.

Many of my classmates graduated to pursue stable career paths or more degrees, but I left Harvard with my sights set on the campaign trail—a fast-paced environment with an uncertain future and an objective with a hard deadline.

After graduation, I packed up my meager belongings and drove halfway across the country, not knowing where I would live or what my life would look like after the campaign ended.

Yet campaign life proved to be oddly familiar—much like a the night before a final, I subsisted on little sleep and nothing but pizza and black coffee, trying to accomplish a day’s worth of tasks in half as much time.

But unlike college assignments, there are no extensions on a campaign, no room for negotiating a final grade. When I woke up the morning after Election Day, the outcome was clear—and then it was over. So I packed up my office, deflated my air mattress, and went back on the road.

I spent the first month of my post-campaign life out of a small suitcase and in friends’ guest rooms, traveling to six different cities as I used the newfound free time that the end of a campaign had handed me.

And after a month of nomadic living, I found myself back in my car, headed toward the promise of a more stable life in our nation’s capital. Armed with a stack of singles and a bag of change, I set forth on Midwestern roads, where my stops at tollbooths nearly outnumbered the cups of coffee consumed over my two-day drive.

I’ve since settled into life on the Hill. I’ve signed a lease and hesitantly decorated my apartment with Craigslist furniture. I now own a real bed and eat pizza only a few times a month (though I still drink far too much coffee). I’d like to think that this life is close to normal—but after the past year, and with another campaign always in sight, I’ve come to realize that normal is always open to interpretation.