It was the stuff of bad holiday films, my arrival. After a successful redeye flight—a straight sea-to-shining-sea, far corner diagonal shot across all those red states, I arrived in Boston at 6:20 a.m. White-knuckled, I landed on the Logan Tarmac after a God-fearing descent through dense clouds and heavy rain. Coaxing my stomach back down to its proper real estate, all I could make from my double paned window was a grey amoeba of condensation. With my backpack, personally illustrated directions of corresponding buses and trains, and my best coat, I began to make my way to the residence of one Meghan R. Callaghan. 

On a Silverline bus I headed over the Charles River, earth and sky melding into one tumultuous frame, rain falling from someplace in between. All I could think about as I traversed that dismal sight were those poor pilgrims and how they had sailed across the Atlantic, staving starvation and diseases, for this. Welcome to the promise land, pilgrim. Glorious New England. If only those poor English had been more like the hot-blooded Spanish and entered the New World through San Diego, instead of landing on what must have felt like more of the same old cold.

Anyhow.

I eventually reached Central Station, met by Callaghan and Jennie Simons—the first of six of Whitworthians I was to see this early December weekend. We walked about eight blocks through tidal waves and swimming pool puddles, having taken on the demeanor of drowned cats before opening the crimson door to her apartment. Shaking out my umbrella, my first words marking this fine reunion were not yet in the way of a warm salutation, or even grateful arrival. Never mind the time passed since our last mutual visit—nearly three years—or the space crossed to achieve such a reunion—the entire United States.

"Some city you live in."

It was the best I could do. Did I mention the time? Before 7 a.m. and my feet were soaked to the bone. Fortunately, these two are already well acquainted with both my thin skin and my hasty mouth.

It wasn't until after a change of clothes and a hot cup of coffee that I came around to the sort of affectionate greetings expected at such an occasion. The journey was over and the wet weather would soon be too, and I could now revel in the delicious matter at hand: our reunion.

Bear with me as I bypass itineraries and arrivals and expedite to around 11 p.m. that night, in Cambridge, at a surprisingly clean bar under some building on the Harvard campus. There we were, six friends around the same table for the first time in a long time, our 2006 graduation. Nearly three years since we had last lived and walked, grocery shopped and drank coffee in the same town. Now we were here—and although Boston in December nearly appeared to be the hitch in the midst of robust and heart-forward plans—suddenly the city never felt warmer.

And so it went. Each carried stories of all the ground traversed and taken in over the shoot of life that had blossomed amidst our separation. We had changed mailboxes and tree lines, scattered like salt of the earth.

There's Meghan Callaghan, who had left for Boston the summer after graduation with little more than a backpack and an AmeriCorps contract. Katie Lincicum has also recently moved to the city with her husband Matt, and is considering becoming a certified mediator through a Harvard program. Jennie Simons has been working as a nurse in a Seattle hospital, in a medical cardiac intensive care unit, while Jennie Wild, who, after working as a doula in Denver for a year, is now in her second year of med school at the UW. Danielle Wegman is going on her third year at a Chicago organization, helping to petition just policies between the U.S. and Latin America.

But what's more than this occupational roll call—these jobs that put food on the table and write honest checks for our landlords—what continues to mark us is the desire to find something we can throw our full weight behind. To find work that is worth our living, work that propels and satisfies.

Throughout our weekend, weaved between long walks in the saturating cold and bellies full of laughter, what struck me most about these gals was the scent of ambition clinging to each. It was something I had not smelled in some time. It hung about sleeves and collars, potent despite the wear three years out of school had furnished. Some are en route to securing certain hard-fought objectives—master's programs and good work—while there are those of us for whom the face of ambition has yet to be defined. Whose hunger is just as sharp, however, without the clarity of direction we had hoped for as students.

Maybe I've been feeling overwhelmed in this year of adult responsibilities: 40 hours a week at a job that is a dull, in an economy that is awful. But at the scent of ambition, to see these dear ones still moving towards that which has been calling, whispering their names for years now—it reminded me of who I am and from where I have come. It reminded me of our time at Whitworth and the careful instruction we received there, the investment of wisdom and importance of perspective.

And for that I am grateful. Grateful for fingers on an open-ended timeline, for blank space on a clean parchment—for Boston in December, wet feet and all.

Jordan Karnes is an editor and freelance writer in San Diego, where she enjoys neighborhood taco shops, bicycles, and blue skies.

If you would like to submit a Post-College Essay for an upcoming issue of The 10, contact the10@whitworth.edu.