Inner Spark

~ Valerie Tauro

Ever since senior year began, so many people around me keep talking about hustling to find a job, moving on to the next step as soon as graduation is over, remembering that this is only the beginning and there is still so much work to be done. And while all of these are very valid things to do after graduation, I couldn’t help but feel so exhausted at just the thought of having to figure out my life post-grad. I didn’t tell any of these sentiments to my mentor, Ben Coco, yet the first thing he told me when we sat down (and something he continued to repeat the full hour and a half that we talked) was that my priority right now should be getting enough sleep. It caught me off guard because 1) yes, everyone said sleep was important but no one I had spoken to had ever centered their life advice around it, and 2) could he tell that I had only slept 4 hours the previous night? I thought it was a lighthearted joke at first, but then Ben kept coming back to it over and over, and I realized how serious he was. Once he had finally drilled the importance of a full 8 hours into my mind, he told me that in order to write well, we need to recognize the inspiration that exists in the world around us, but most importantly, to find it in the people and places we least expect it to be. For example, Ben volunteers at the Catholic Worker, where he is able to talk to people he would otherwise never meet and listen to their stories. In addition to his emphasis on sleep and meeting unexpected people, Ben also sent me a reflection he wrote on healing from burnout. It touched on many of the same topics we discussed, but it also talked about the importance of finding joy and wanting to truly live and experience life. Before our meeting, I expected Ben to focus entirely on career-related things: resumes, applications, routines, and productivity. But he offered me something far more valuable and far more pertinent to what I actually needed to hear: It’s perfectly fine to take time to recover and rediscover your inner spark after you graduate, and it’s incredibly important to make sure you’re getting enough sleep because that’s what fuels you to find your spark. Before you start worrying about job applications and fellowships, you need the energy that comes from proper sleep, and before you can write a beautiful novel, you need to live.