"I Hope I'm OK. I'm OK. I Hope."

They breathe life into this city each fall and leave an empty feeling (along with a few empty T seats) when they vanish each spring. In this city of 250,000 college students, we asked one to give an account of the quintessential American passage from young adulthood to citizen of the real world. Today, she's a 22-year-old Emerson College senior, a writing, literature, and publishing major from Old Tappan, New Jersey. Tomorrow, she's a 22-year-old college graduate. Meet Erica Gaeta.

FEBRUARY 20, 2004 | 1:07 p.m.

Fridays remind me of nothing. They're after Thursdays and before Saturdays, and I think about memory and my home town in New Jersey and if my parents will help me with the rent this month. Last night, I was up until 4 in the morning click-clicking to find listed New York jobs and New York apartments. I read "3-4 years experience needed" over and over and scrunched my nose, because that smells rotten. I made five appointments, one with a psychiatrist to go over my brain and one with a doctor to examine my body. The career center will see me in a week or so, and even though the girl at the desk had a disapproving tone, I told her I need help with my future. She gave me a card with the date and time, so I won't forget.

I haven't told my father I won't be staying with him this summer. I haven't told him that saving money isn't as important as keeping my sanity. That a dog, three cats, and his girlfriend's son in an apartment make me feel as if the world needed a place to land and consequently chose me. Independence. Starting over. I bought him a thank-you card from CVS to let him know I appreciate his cleaning up my credit-card mess.

FEBRUARY 22 | 7:02 p.m.

My mother told me to soak my feet in Epsom salt. I called her after my cafe job in Davis Square, where my feet throb and a small coffee is $1.40 and the regulars have names like Frank and Tom. It brings back the feeling of a small town, the way everyone asks you if your day is going well, and you lie and say it is when work is terrible and you slept only three hours the night before. But when the Boston weather is over 30 degrees, I smile and say, "Would you like a pastry with that?" My manager calls me her "little prodigy," and I whisper to myself that I'm from a blue-collar family. A family that taught me how to work for my money, to recognize the value in a self-owned business, the integrity behind keeping responsibility. I felt like a girl in a modern fairy tale.

I almost have bronchitis. I almost want to lie in bed all night and feel bad for myself, blowing my nose, drinking fluids, coughing up my life. But I'll call friends that I've known for more than 15 years and tell them about this [magazine] project. And about the memoir where I rant on and on, twisting language around. I'll call my grandma, because she's overproud of me, still saying I'm her "angel from heaven," telling me I'm the funniest and that she always knew I could do it. She told me that now is my time to shine. My future's so bright it's starting to hurt my eyes.

FEBRUARY 24 | 7:44 p.m.

At 12:30 p.m., I sauntered into my thesis adviser's office with one-third of a roll of toilet paper I used to blow my nose. Arm's distance, so he wouldn't get sick. A poster of Madonna hangs on the wall, tacked up obliquely behind his desk. John Skoyles writes poetry and memoirs and journalistic articles, and he sits slightly back on his chair, his hands folded together. He looks so proud of me. We go over a section of my thesis, a memoir about family, an edgy domestic nonfiction escapade. He's confused about which of my mother's husbands came first, second, and third. There are only a few red marks on the essay. I pretend I'm at a big fancy publishing house with a mirrored lobby and a security guard. I want to win the resume battle, the interview process, and the final evaluation. I want to be successful and recognized. Madonna winks as if she knows what's in store for me.

I choose not to miss out on Murray Schwartz's lectures on crematoriums. Holocaust Literature class is a one-hour-and-45-minute depression. No smiling while watching tragic movies of Jews being carried away to nowhere and German men with sharp jaw lines screaming.

Rachael chose me to be the prose editor for Gangsters in Concrete, an almost deceased literary magazine on campus. We're revamping it, and I use the word "revamp" six more times this week. I use it when I want to feel beautiful and start revamping my self-confidence or when my mother tells me her apartment is getting messy and I say she should revamp it, starting with the furniture. It starts to lose its meaning. We're picking only the excellent pieces, the language that grabs and strangles, alongside the stories that help you breathe. I facilitate meetings, and we discuss. This will make my resume thicker.

FEBRUARY 25 | 12:06 p.m.

As I lit a cigarette outside of 120 Boylston Street, Dave said, "Now that I'm graduating college, I finally know how to learn." Lisa nodded in agreement, and I knew exactly what he meant. It's as if we've taken a walk for the past four years and only now do we stop to look at what's along the side of the road. I see scary creatures. I see beautiful people and moments in history I don't understand. Dave has grown up. I remember him in 2000, rolling cigarettes outside of the dorm, resting his head against the brick, laughing from the lower part of his stomach. Now he stands different; his eyes are clearer. I wonder if I look this way, too, or if I'm still 18 and pale and tired.

Everyone read a six-page story about my mother, in memoir class. They edited, critiqued, gawked. Green tea and my favorite professor and my mouth closed, because a workshop involves everyone but the writer. Someone points out a strong line. My face turns red, and I'm covered in humility and embarrassment and pride. My professor lets me know that my mix of the real and the imaginary gets confusing, that the reader gets lost a few seconds after a great literary moment. I tell him I don't like the linear story. That I can't stay in the real for too long. I need to dip in and out of what hurts. Then I swim away.

FEBRUARY 27 | 6:55 p.m.

It's 1970. Someone that looks like me with wire-frame glasses and dark curly hair writes in a notebook to remember the funny parts of the day. Same seat. Different era with an-other wind blowing outside. I wonder if I'm simply a replacement for a generation. Has there been a countless number of me? Sitting in class, taking her coffee black, more scared today then yesterday. I think not.

FEBRUARY 28 | 8:02 p.m.

Things I want to learn:

1. Statistics -- where this math takes you and exactly why everyone says it's so difficult.

2. Spanish -- to make me feel more romantic, traveled, colorful, pouty-lipped, and daring.

3. Patience.

4. How to calmly tell bad parents they're being bad parents.

5. How to fulfill all of my desires and switch careers 10 times and rise to the top in each one.

MARCH 1 | 12:04 p.m.

After four years of complaining about Boston and its one-way streets, the quiet after 10 p.m., how my life is dancing in New York City without me -- I think I'm staying here this summer. It's all about practicality, making a pro list, a con list, a line down the middle to write a poem on. My girlfriend Leslie will move from the Emerson dorms to my apartment, and my roommates don't mind, and we'll grocery shop at the closest Star Market. The career center smelled like plastic. Fliers for internships in China teaching English hung on the walls. I grabbed a sheet with the "area's largest publishing houses." Greg, the thin man sitting across from me in the office, gave me an alumna's name, told me I have a loaded resume, and smiled when I made a joke about the West Coast. I talked too much. For someone who is getting ready to tackle the real world, I certainly wasn't letting him give me much guidance. Greg could tell how eager I am to start my future.

I hope I'm OK. I hope I'm OK. I hope I'm OK. I'm OK. I hope.

MARCH 3 | 4:24 p.m.

I received an e-mail from Kerrie Kemperman, writing department mediator and communicator, about the senior writing awards. I told my father I'm banking on a prize because the odds are small and I'm cooking up a piece called "How I Learned to Read," delineating the rather sad truth of me reading to my parents when I was younger, not the other way around. I learned independently, checking out hundreds of books from the library and pointing a flashlight at the words under the bedcovers. I made my own story time.

MARCH 8 | 5:41 p.m.

New York City rests under my elbow. It's spring break, and I think my best friend's apartment in Queens looks like a gingerbread house with extra frosting. I arrived last night with Leslie, called my father to let him know I'm OK, and ate veggie chili at a downtown bar.

MARCH 10 | 3:30 p.m.

I just woke up. Call me lazy or sluggish or the word my mother hates most, "lethargic." I say it's mid-semester, and my eyes have been heavy since January; the Boston snow keeps falling and falling on them. So this spring break is word games with high school friends, cold beer, a housewarming party, car rides across the river to New Jersey, a mouse they named Jerome, and a pull-out couch.

Last night, we drove 10 minutes away to Brooklyn to see my grandmother. Leslie, Jason, Dan and I ate pasta with Italian sauce and chicken cutlets, breaded by my Aunt Marie, who lives across the hall. The building is a generational one, owned by my grandmother's mother and passed down. There were eight children in the family; I heard the whole story over tea sophomore year when I was writing a paper for Introduction to Women's Studies. Before any cultural or social revolution, my grandmother and her six sisters and one brother focused on tradition and the fancy outfits they wore on Easter. Before any bold-mouthed social feminists, my Aunt Ana worked in a factory with the other girls to supplement her mother's small paycheck every week.

MARCH 11 | 8:13 p.m.

I haven't seen my parents since I've been in New York, and I'm not sure why.

MARCH 14 | 11:55 p.m.

Back in Boston. My room is clean and stares at me like I'm a stranger. Hardwood floors.

A twin bed my father bought me two years ago. It only fits one, so I hog the space and roll over on friends and lovers.

A picture of my mother from my brother's wedding in Bermuda. This is surrounded by other photos in black-and-white. She stands with her hands together in a sparkle-sparkle dress, pursing her lips, looking beautiful. My roommate asked who it was, and I told him not to get any ideas.

The kind of windows that squeak when you open them. Dust on the pane. A view into the neighbor's house and fl oral pillows that match their wallpaper. Books about race. Books about sleeping habits and psychotherapy. Red candles that burn hot and blue ones that smell like the ocean. A framed needlepoint picture of a geisha from 1976.

MARCH 17 | 4:04 a.m.

It's 4 in the morning, and I have to go to work in two hours. All I can think of is traveling and how Paris would feel right after dinner. I'm wondering if I'll ever have the money to pick up and go -- maybe leave a note for friends and family that I'll be gone for months, to see what I haven't seen, to find experience that I can use in my writing. It will be the quintessential moment of self-exploration. Maybe just a simple vacation. Either way, Paris in the evening with a dark coffee and my hair up.

MARCH 21 | 8:12 p.m.

I feel in transition. As if I'm floating between important periods of my life -- not quite finished with the previous one, yet a small step already taken toward the future.

The mere recognition of this transition period leads me to believe that my future wants to be close to me. That what comes next wants to come now. I'm using the next three months to gather my thoughts, save up some money, search for the perfect career, and rest my eyes (like my grandmother does by 11 p.m. in front of the television). I want to adorn my resume with reasons one through 10 why I am the most qualified to make art, twist language around my finger, and lift up the eyelids of the world to see if they're still awake.

MARCH 25 | 7:12 p.m.

Jenn, one of my closest friends, is lying in a hospital bed suffering through her second-to-last round of chemotherapy. The first week of December, I cried my hardest when I found out she had leukemia. Now her hair is gone, and we joke about the sad things to keep our spirits high. She's 25 and dreaming about finishing college, snagging a career in psychology, and raising children of her own. Since I was younger, I've held my friends so close. Now that I'm older, I'm afraid to lose them. I'm worried the years will go too fast and there won't be enough time to spend together.

I'm concerned we'll all get swallowed up by work and family and everyday obligations. I want to stretch the clock and add more time. I want to add more time.

MARCH 27 | 2:41 p.m.

There I was with hair shorter than ear length and a blue gown and a blue cap. I had heels on. I was wearing a quarter-smile, and it was June 2000. My high school graduation taught me that conclusions bring good weather, an encouraging cheer from your mother, and the beginning of the end of wondering what others think of you. In a month and a half, I'll walk past another group of my peers and reach my hand out to grab the second piece of paper that means I've completed the next step for the world to hold me in high regard.

This time will be different. My hair is past my shoulders and dark, and the look on my face is more determined. My parents have to travel four hours to get here, and now they're divorced. Mom will ride the bus from Manhattan, and we'll make a weekend out of it. I haven't seen them since early January -- right after the Christmas holiday -- and my mother calls me every two days now and says, "You sound good, Erica." She says that my stress level will go down once I have a full-time job, once I don't have homework or trivial responsibilities. They say mother knows best. "They" say a lot of things, one being that college graduation is a memorable event, a time for celebration, and a glorious end to four years of hard work.

MARCH 29 | 5:55 p.m.

April is the last time my parents will pay my rent. For a more dramatic effect, I could say they "cut me off." But I won't say that, because in times of trouble or in a fit of hunger, I know I can call them. So I expect the upcoming month to be the most difficult. I'm throwing myself into a 40-hour workweek and a full-time school schedule and a thesis due May 6 and this article. This self-reflective blurb. My everyday imagination, the way my mind works, the fears that plague me -- written for everyone to see. I think about how much I love myself, in a healthy way. How my circulation of one can't compare to the distribution of an urban magazine. My father wants to frame this journal. I want to be dipped in gold and placed on the mantel.

APRIL 19 | 7:17 p.m.

I saw green grass today. Each blade sprung up, and I shuffled my feet in the patch on the side of my house. Earlier in the day, I sat on a bench in the Public Garden and was interviewed about my experiences at Emerson College for an upcoming admissions DVD. The video guy made sure the background looked picturesque, a tall weeping willow and the top of a church steeple behind me in the distance.

The woman asked me what my "coolest" project at Emerson had been. I told her, "Despite the fact that it's solitary, I'd have to say my thesis." My writing is strong here. The 40 bound pages of story after story about my family make for an interesting read, and you can hold this in your hands or pass it on to a friend. I took a deep breath and gave advice to prospective students: "Make sure everything you do means something."

APRIL 22 | 3:30 p.m.

My father screamed "I love you" at the top of his lungs today. I called him only 10 minutes after I found out I had won first place in the non-fiction category of the Senior Writing Awards. The e-mail said "High Distinction" -- that I should attend the awards ceremony during commencement week. That I receive $200. My mother, grandmother, and aunt sent me cards that said things like "I'm so proud" and "I'm not surprised." For the first time in my life, I feel validated. People are supporting my successes. I'm taking small steps to rise to the top.

I took a nap with my to-do list under my pillow. I thought I'd be sure to complete everything if I kept it close enough. I dreamed about writing two papers for Holocaust Literature. In my sleep, the bills were paid. I planned a graduation party for the end of May.

APRIL 26 | 8:56 p.m.

My Somerville apartment is green and three stories high. We have a back porch and a front porch. I've been sitting outside lately, for hours even, staring at the house across the street, watching bikes go by. School ends in two days. Occasionally, I hear a soundtrack to my life, a loud intrusive bang in the background.

In five years, I'll apply to graduate school. I'm interested in a program at New York University or Columbia. For now, there is nothing and everything and four tickets to the Wang Center to watch me in a black cap and gown. By 2005, I'll have read 20 books I've always wanted to read but never had the time. I'll have saved over $5,000 and have a publishing job in a mirrored elevator building.

I'll buy my mother a rocking chair and land my father a gig in a jazz band. The winters will always get colder. I'll remember Boston in spring. The way the trees look as if they're bowing to me as I walk by. The floating-on-air feeling. How no one told me it could be this great.

MAY 1 | 4:45 p.m.

I want a city apartment and a country house. A lazy bull-dog and striped pajama pants that are weathered and fabulous. I don't want a cleaning lady or a gardener to plant the flowers in the front lawn. I'd like antique typewriters with silver keys for tired fingertips, and I'll blast music in the kitchen, making omelets, swinging my hips until I decide it's time to stop. I want friends over at least once a week for wine and remembering. Books by the dozen on my nightstand. An award-winning novel with my name on the spine. Maybe two. A lover curled up against my back. Passion and romance and picnics on weekends and walks around museums and adventure. I won't care how tired I get. I'll never stop running.