Alida Nugent is a recent Emerson College graduate who spends most of her days wallowing in the pain of college loans, inventing new sandwiches for her eating pleasure, and contemplating how bandeaus could potentially fit in her wardrobe. She currently lives in Brooklyn: the land of the "$8 cocktails," and is writing a book based on her blog, the-frenemy.com. She also writes for the Huffington Post and the Sundance Channel, has a dog who she resents, and at least three guys who she texts at night.
"My favorite item in my closet consists of something I will never wear again. I find this fitting for my over-nostalgic personality, prone to remembering things more fondly than they actually were: Whiskey, ex-boyfriends, and the first season of Glee being some of those other things. Anyway, my graduation cap is crammed in the closet that is actually outside my room because I live in Brooklyn and there is no logical space for anything in Brooklyn except takeout boxes and insanely high gas bills. I don’t even know why I brought this very expensive hat with me while I was stuffing all sorts of questionable clothing into big cardboard boxes (will legwarmers be cool again? NO.) to make my very first big move into adulthood. Except that I do know. It is a reminder of how proud my parents were of me, which they might not be so much when they get to my ‘sweet pad’ and see I haven’t washed my sheets in three months. My mom might be upset at the fact that I refuse to ‘microwave sponges to get rid of germs,’ and ‘date guys not in bands,’ but in May 2010, I was her first kid to graduate from a four-year college. It is a reminder that I was proud of myself, too. Surely after months of living with no air-conditioning I will forget how desperately I wanted to move to New York, and that is what the cap is for. I probably won’t have too many other ‘proud’ moments in my early 20s, save for eventually turning down a one night stand. I am okay with this, because that’s what girls like me (girls who play David Bowie for their dates and write about said dates on the internet) sign up for. Shame, not one night stands. Maybe."