The Polish Diaries
Navigating post-grad, spending a week in Poland, starting a new internship, working at New York Comic-Con, needing a change of scenery, developing a Strava streak, and trying to figure out what a new normal looks like.
Post-grad life has definitely been interesting, to say the least. So far, it’s largely been a mixture of trying to figure out what a new normal looks like, creating and adapting some kind of a new schedule that, for the first time in my life, is not surrounded around school, to countless job interviews and applications, to eventually starting an internship and finally feeling as if both my feet are planted on the ground.
My first month out of school was what I deemed as my well-needed break after five intense months, that being my final semester of undergrad. It was a time full of seeing and catching up with friends, graduation parties, enjoying the last weeks of spring, seeing way too many movies, assisting with a friend’s set as a scenic painter, working again with Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre as a volunteer for their 20th Anniversary Gala (and seeing so many familiar faces after a year!), and ultimately, counting down the days until my trip to Poland.
Cześć Polska
If I had to sum up that trip into one (albeit long) sentence, I would describe it as a week in Poland where I reunited with my favorite tea of all time, visited new cities, went on a pirate ship tour, accidentally locked myself in a bathroom, only read Sally Rooney and deeply regretted it, and referring to anything that happened as my Polish occurrence. “Look, this is my Polish lipgloss!”. My mom and I went on the trip together to visit family (contrary to what you may gather, I am not Polish!), and we spent a week in the outskirts of a Polish town not too far of a drive from Gdańsk. The trip truly came at a time when I really needed it and needed to get out of my own head for a little bit. With being in a different time zone, not having internet all the time, and simply being able to disconnect, it healed something in me I think. I’ve always enjoyed traveling and experiencing and observing other cultures and other ways of life, and this trip was no exception to that. My uncle and his wife had planned an itinerary for us to do throughout the week, including a few trips to Gdańsk itself; where we went to museums, went on a pirate ship tour, me spending thirty minutes looking through a jewelry boutique ( to this day, I refer to the jewelry I bought as my Polish stack), taking so many photos, and generally taking everything and all the sights in. We drove through the countryside on our way to Malbork to go to the Malbork castle, went to another city and walked through the forest before we ended up on a beach, had dinner at my cousin’s house and I was in complete shock that at 11 pm, it’s still not pitch dark outside, and went to so many different stores and markets which funny enough, ended up being some of my favorite trips that we did. I loved seeing what they had in comparison to stores in New York, and how different our ways of life and being are.
In the following weeks after my trip, I started an internship as a production assistant for a wellness company. It lasted four months and was genuinely such a lovely and positive learning experience as I had the chance to approach production from a completely different side, one that was not theater. Over the months, I found myself growing slightly disconnected from theater and feeling the need to step away for a bit. And by having this change of scenery, not only did it prove beneficial for me as I gained a different kind of work experience (and one that I simply enjoyed doing), but it did also help me hone in on the path I’d like to continue exploring moving forward: general production and production assistance.
And then suddenly Comic-Con comes into the picture. With much appreciation for one of my close friends saying I should apply to work there with her, I found myself confirmed to be working as an event staff member for Mappa’s booth. It was four days of talking to more than a thousand people, handing out thousands of show-related souvenirs and being placed in charge of keeping an hourly count of one of them, realizing I definitely need a new pair of sneakers, my friend and I taking turns visiting each other’s booths on our breaks to say hi, my love for a bento box being reaffirmed, seeing so many creative costumes and cosplays, and appreciating the love and passion people have for things they enjoy. It was my first time attending Comic-Con, and needless to say it was an experience. But a very cool experience.
Life has a funny way of working itself out. I genuinely did not expect for any of this to come about or for things to turn out this way when I graduated, but that’s the way it happened and I’m thankful that it did. Navigating post-grad is very weird, very confusing, and can be a lot thrown your way all at once. Getting back into riding my bike has definitely helped keep me grounded (shoutout Strava), along with seeing my friends, making sure that I’m not being too hard on myself, and continuing to do things for myself that I enjoy.