I don’t remember much about the day I left for college. I know my father and sister were impatient to leave and annoyed at the amount of crap I had managed to cram into a Saturn sedan. I remember sitting on the bare wooden window seat in my empty room, looking at my dog in the backyard. I remember some of the car ride to Massachusetts, mostly boring, and keeping my admissions documents next to me at all times.

But mostly I remember my mother and the peanut butter.

Mom celebrated with me the day I received my acceptance letter. I cried upon learning that, unlike Smith who had accepted me but offered me zero tuition reduction, Clark University had offered me over half my tuition costs in scholarships. I gave up the big-name school for the lower-priced one, figuring a degree was a degree and it wouldn’t make any difference. It didn’t, but more on that later.

I always knew I wanted to go away to school. My older siblings had done degrees at Washtenaw Community College, so I was the first to go off to a four-year university. I didn’t want to go to University of Michigan. I didn’t apply to any local schools. I knew that if I stayed at home I’d be living in Michigan, at my mother’s house, with five other siblings and a slew of pets. I wanted to travel. I wanted to have a space to myself, somewhere I could read without being interrupted — to be surrounded by thinkers and doers in an academic environment.

I wanted all of the things that students want: to be immersed in an environment that allows you to be as insular and privileged as you could possibly want.

On the day I left, Mom waited to hug me at the door. None of her kids had ever gone this far away before, slept this far away before, been more than a few hours’ drive. She didn’t make the trip with us, as there was barely room in the car for another t-shirt. She hugged me and handed me a half-empty jar of peanut butter, in case I hadn’t packed anything to eat when I got there.

When I got in the car, I realized I didn’t have spoons or bread, neither had she handed me any. She hadn’t planned; she was panicking. Dealing with the unknown the only way we knew how: take a snack. I kept that jar of peanut butter on my bookshelf until I graduated.

Living in a single dorm was the biggest culture shock I had ever experienced. I hadn’t gotten my own bedroom until I was fifteen, and had never once been the only person in the house. I opened doors to the outside and stood there, flabbergasted, no cats racing past my ankles to the forbidden outside. I bought a box of Pop Tarts and placed it next to my computer. It stayed there for five days. Because I didn’t move it. I fell asleep to no television noises, no dogs barking, no yelling about dishes. I was alone.

I couldn’t sleep for three days.

I developed night terrors, which I still have today, as a result of the silence. One instance involved me, standing in the hallway outside my room — which I had managed to open and unlock — in boxers and a t-shirt, in full-on ninja pose. I woke up standing there, wondering what the hell was going on, when a passerby asked if I was ok. I applied for a double the next semester, if only for my own safety.

After that, it was pretty much college life as usual. Studying, parties, drinking, taking oneself very seriously. After two years, a semester abroad and two summers of mall jobs, I got that coveted prize: the bachelor’s degree.

They don’t tell you when you sign on, but that degree comes at a price. When the years of studying, testing, and (in my case) writing are over, you have to join the workforce. Years of selfishness, of putting off debt in service of your work — oh God, it’s so important, your work — have now led you to this place where you have to make money. And pretty often, you’re not qualified — at least on paper — for the job you eventually get.

It’s that unknowable feeling, the one that films like Garden State are made of: the college denouement. “What, I can’t get paid to quote Keats and explicate Shakespearean sonnets? Everyone was so encouraging, so accommodating up to this point… who’s going to help me now? What does this piece of paper actually get me?”

Those of you with English degrees — and the 20/20 hindsight they’re wrapped in — know the answer: you have two options. One, turn around, go right back in the building and sign up for two more years so you can teach this stuff. This is a good option if you really, really, love it.

Two: Sit down. Turn on your computer. Google search every job anyone has ever had, and pick one. Make money. Hope to God you eventually figure out what you want to do.

Strangely, I gained equal experience from the year after school than all the years spent in it. To learn what you want to do, you learn what you don’t want to do. You do it all. Try. Reject. Plan. Fail. Plan again. You’ll know when you’ve found it, because it’ll be that thing that won’t go away. The hardest part is finding it; all the hard work after that is the good part, it’s in service of something, it’s fulfilling.

Knowing all that now, I wouldn’t take those years back. Is higher education a sham? No. Is it too expensive? Hell yes. But the returns vary. If I were a med student, I’d be much more optimally placed in the workforce. As it is, I make enough money to live quite happily, sometimes using the skills I acquired in endless writing courses, sometimes using my arguably tenuous customer service skills. But I saw London, Paris, Ireland. I saw the sun come up over the hills of Edinburgh. I made friends who never met any of my siblings before they met me. And if any of that experience makes me a dime, I can hardly say it wasn’t worth it.

At the very least, I’ll make enough to keep me in peanut butter.

Sarah Smallwood is a freelance writer living and working in Ann Arbor. She is currently rewriting her first novel, keeps a daily blog at The Other Shoe and hosts a podcast at Stuff with Things. She can be reached at heybeedoo at gmail dot com.