{"id":1043,"date":"2025-10-10T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T08:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/2025\/10\/10\/2025-10-10-vertigo-of-freedom\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T23:11:39","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T23:11:39","slug":"2025-10-10-vertigo-of-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/2025\/10\/10\/2025-10-10-vertigo-of-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Vertigo of\u00a0freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Grace Scheller<\/a> · Perspectives Editor ’22-25, Managing Editor ’23-25<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Class
Class of ’25 Collegian alumni with the Collegian’s advisor, Nick Hildebrand. From left to right: former News Editor Violet Whitmore, former Managing Editor and Perspectives Editor Grace Scheller, current Staff Advisor Hildebrand and former Sports Editor and Editor-in-Chief Emma Rossi. \u2014 GRACE DAVID<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The first work trip I took for my brand-new big kid job was a short excursion to Grove City. A fellow marketing colleague and I made the drive up to campus to photograph Smith Hall, a project my company had a hand in designing. I led my colleague through the classrooms, the labs and the campus walkways. I told her to mind the grass, to park in the back of the student lot and to zip up her top as I high-fived my old professors and gabbed with those I had even the briefest relationships with during my four years at school. I did everything in my power to feel like the established, respected student I once was. I was likely vibrant with desperation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can remember exactly how it felt to be an upperclassman. What I felt during my first visit as an alumna was not that. I was starving for the familiarity of what I’d already mastered, and instead, I was met with a garish, bone-deep sense of melancholy. Of course, I always assumed I’d come back one day without an active student ID or a roommate to go home to, but to live those moments out in real time is something else entirely. You can always go back, but you can never go home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s the feeling of pure displacement \u2013 of winding up in an unexpected limbo where you’re not ready for what comes next, but what came before is off the table. In short, it amounts to, “What now?” That’s when “vertigo of freedom” kicks in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kierkegaard describes anxiety as the feeling we experience once we recognize the sheer abundance of choices before us. He describes it as a sort of dizziness, a vertigo. “He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy \u2026 It is just as much in his own eye as the abyss \u2026 for suppose he has not looked down.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Kierkegaard doesn’t position his metaphor as a warning, but rather as an awakening. This is where he flips the switch: “Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our job as post-grad individuals is to learn this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

individuals is simply to practice flipping the switch. It begins by recognizing that what came before you is gone for good \u2013 and for all the right reasons. God shut a door that he knew could no longer serve you, regardless of how strong your urge to open it may be. It is a wildly uncomfortable feeling to be displaced in such a way. But the goal now is to sit with yourself, to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, to overcome the vertigo of freedom while you have the luxury of stillness. The ground below you and the path you once walked may not feel familiar, but that’s only because you’ve stepped beyond the limits that once defined you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My second work trip for my brand-new big kid job was a two-day site visit in Washington, D.C. The hotel concierge addressed me as Miss Scheller, described my cushy suite on the top floor and the nearest Michelin-star restaurant. I listened as the businesswomen sauntered through the lobby in pencil skirts and Louboutins. I did not look like these women, and I was certainly not serious enough of a person to receive the work-trip concierge spiel that they did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I certainly didn’t belong in that lobby. And I didn’t belong on campus, either. Neither of those things, it turns out, is necessarily bad news. The ground felt unsteady beneath me in both scenarios. I felt Kierkegaard’s vertigo, but at least it’s starting to feel like momentum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first work trip I took for my brand-new big kid job was a short excursion to Grove City. A fellow marketing colleague and I made the drive up to campus to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":2082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[27,145,34],"class_list":["post-1043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-staff-editorials","tag-editorial","tag-grace-scheller","tag-issue-2025-10-10"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-06-vertigo-of-freedom-1-v2.jpg",975,854,false],"thumbnail":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-06-vertigo-of-freedom-1-v2.jpg",150,131,false],"medium":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-06-vertigo-of-freedom-1-v2.jpg",300,263,false],"medium_large":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-06-vertigo-of-freedom-1-v2.jpg",768,673,false],"large":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-06-vertigo-of-freedom-1-v2.jpg",975,854,false],"1536x1536":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-06-vertigo-of-freedom-1-v2.jpg",975,854,false],"2048x2048":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-06-vertigo-of-freedom-1-v2.jpg",975,854,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Ian Schartner","author_link":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/author\/schartnerij23\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"The first work trip I took for my brand-new big kid job was a short excursion to Grove City. A fellow marketing colleague and I made the drive up to campus to","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1043"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2224,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043\/revisions\/2224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}