A week ago I graduated from university. For good this time. And even though I handed in my Master thesis at the end of last September and have not had a uni class since last January, it only now fully settled in that I have finished university. Or not even really now. Since coming back from Australia a little over two months ago I feel like I have been wearing transition lenses - only they have not really adjusted to the light conditions I am currently in.

My glasses are still set on being a student even though I have left university months ago. But realistically being a student is all I have known the past 20 years. I was in primary school, then in secondary school before heading to uni for my Bachelor degree and then on to my Master. Being a student was a major part of my personality and lifestyle. While I have also continuously worked since I was 13 my main occupation on all official forms, on immigration forms and even on my tax return was listed as student. I don´t really know what it looks like to be an actual grownup. What it is like to work full time for longer than a couple of months. What it is like not to go to university with all of your friends and meeting up for lunch and coffee dates every day or to go out for drinks on a Tuesday just because.

I currently work freelance and due to restrictions at my current workplace I am only allowed to work 10 days a month. So I have an intense amount of free time on my hands and since I have a long-distance relationship I spend a lot of that time in my old student city. And being there makes me feel like an imposter, like I am just playing pretend when I am on campus or in the cafeteria or getting coffee with my friends. Göttingen is a student city, a third of the population are students and almost half of the people here are connected to the uni in one form or another. And here I am - no longer a student but also not fully entered into adulthood. I feel like I am in a weird limbo between two life periods, like my transition lenses are still darkened from the blaring sun of being a student and have not fully accustomed to the dimmer light of full-time work and like I am unable to see where the fuck I am going.

I have not lived in the same flat for more than fifteen months since I moved out from my mum´s house at age 19. That makes almost seven years in 13 different flats (as well as my mum´s house each summer and my boyfriend´s couch for about two months in between), across 10 cities, six countries and three continents. I am tired. Actually I am knackered. All I want is my own home. Obviously not bought I am a millenial afterall - but my own place. With my own furniture, my own nice cups and my own milk frother to have coffee in the morning. Nothing has made me so happy as my little flat I lived in before I moved to Australia and I miss it so dearly. I yearn for a home so intensely at the moment and for the continuous back and forth to finally stop. Despite having a room in Cologne at the moment, there are no curtains, I sleep on an air matress, I have about ten outfits there... it feels about as much as home as the fake bag you got in vacation at Turkey feels like the real deal.

I have been in transit for seven years straight, always planning the next move, next stop, next city and I am tired. I want my lenses to be in one place for long enough to adjust, I want to have the right tint of glass for my current life, I want to truly build a home, I don´t want to have to zig zag between four cities all the damn time.

Obviously your entire twenties are a transition period. You go (slowly but surely) from adolescence to true adulthood. There is a lot of confusion and insecurity and big changes and it is so so fun and so terrifying at the same time. I just feel like after seven years of travelling around like crazy and moving back and forth what feels like a gazillion times and like I need about a year to just have a routine and breath. What I am saying: I am tired of transition lenses and would love a new pair right about now - I am just not sure if I need sunglasses or plain ones.