The Comedown

Finishing grad school didn’t feel the way I thought it would.

It didn’t end with a bang, but with a quiet click: Submit.

There was no epiphany. No loud exhale. No sweeping cinematic moment where everything clicked into place and I felt like a brand-new person.

Just like that, grad school is over. After two years of deadlines and data, case studies and coffee-fueled nights, my final assignment disappeared into the digital ether. No streamers. No choir of angels. Just a strange, steady silence.

I thought it would feel like a finish line. Familiar. Celebratory. Tangible.

Instead, it felt like stepping off a treadmill that has been moving just fast enough to keep me at the upper end of Zone 3. And now my legs don’t quite trust the ground.

There’s a kind of emotional whiplash in completing something that mattered this much. Not because I’m ungrateful, but because when you’ve built your days around forward motion, stillness—the absence of urgency—can feel like loss.

This is the part no one really talks about. The come down.

The part after the practicum hours are finished, the papers and the presentations are graded, when your inbox quiets and your brain finally has a little space to think its own thoughts again—but doesn’t quite know what to do with them.

It feels a lot like cresting what you thought was the final climb, only to find another stretch of singletrack where the summit should’ve been. Your legs are buzzing, your breath catches, and the views you were chasing don’t appear.

There’s just more trail.

That’s what this feels like.

And maybe the whole point is that the work wasn’t leading to a summit at all—it was just leading to more trail.

I’ll be honest, it’s really, really tempting to skip this part—to rush toward the next goal, the next race, the next thing to chase.

That’s the pull of the hedonic treadmill. Keep moving. Keep achieving. Don’t stop long enough to feel the actual weight of what you’ve done.

But this deserves to be marked.

Not with noise or performative joy. But with acknowledgment. With deep, quiet respect for the version of me that kept showing up for two full years when it would’ve been easier to quit. For the version of me who wrote, studied, ran, coached, and built another business while I sat with doubt, asked hard questions, developed boundaries, and stayed open to becoming someone new.

That work wasn’t just academic. It was personal.

My background in journalism and advertising taught me how to craft stories.

Narrative Theory, CBT, Humanistic Theory, and SDT helped me better understand the ones we tell ourselves.

Grad school taught me how to hold them all at once—and how to help others do the same.

Put them together and I have something more honest than I’ve ever had: a self I recognize.

I didn’t come back to school to learn how to write a better tagline.

I came back to remember how to tell the truth.

And I have a degree now. Which is cool.

But what matters more is the integration of it: the ability to pair what I know in my bones with what I’ve learned in books.

The kind of knowing that doesn’t need a spotlight.

Just a safe space to land.

The good news is, I know exactly what comes next. I’ll hard launch it later today. It’s been ready for weeks. I’ve been ready. I just haven’t been in a rush to label it. I’ve done enough rushing.

So for the next few hours, I’m taking a deliberate cool-down lap.

Not because I’m finished, but because recovery is part of the work—mental or physical.

Because the pause is part of the process.

Because not every finish needs a fist pump.

Some just ask you to pause long enough to feel and remember and embrace what it took to get here.

So I’m letting this moment breathe.

Even if it’s just a walk outside. Even if it’s just a quiet reminder.

I fucking did it.

And it mattered.