RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Around this time last year, we started getting to know four Howard University seniors. Ariel Alford, Taylor Davis, Kevin Peterman and Leighton Watson gave us a look into life on the precipice of adulthood. Now they have arrived. Ariel Alford spent the last few months as a student teacher in Washington, D.C., finishing her final requirement before getting her degree. Taylor Davis stayed in Washington, too. We'll hear more from her in a moment. Leighton Watson moved just a few hours' drive away to Richmond, Va., where he works in finance. Kevin Peterman moved up the East Coast to Princeton University, and in many ways, life is the same there. He went straight to grad school - seminary at Princeton - so he's still a student, but he says it's been different in a couple of ways. First off, he's one of the younger people in his program.
KEVIN PETERMAN: I forget that I'm often 22 because most of my classmates are much older than me. So I'm engaging in conversations constantly about marriage, about Ph.D. work, about careers down the line, and I really do begin to forget I just graduated from college.
MARTIN: At the same time, he's trying to navigate an academic world that looks a lot different than the one he came from. Howard is one of this country's most elite historically black colleges and universities. The student population is 85 percent African-American. The Princeton Theological Seminary is 63 percent white.
PETERMAN: One of the first lessons I learned in my first week at Princeton was that I was as much student as I am teacher because many people who come to this institution have not been exposed to African-Americans and especially not African-American ministers or the African-American faith tradition. So as much as I'm learning in the classroom, I'm always constantly teaching those around me and sharing more about my own individual faith and my own individual cultural, religious heritage with my classmates. And sometimes it can become frustrating.
MARTIN: Even so, he says his four years at Howard made him feel more secure in who he is and what he believes.
PETERMAN: When I was applying to Princeton, I was nervous about leaving the historical black college space and coming to an Ivy League seminary. And it's only until I got there that I realized that I had been prepared better than most of my fellow African-American students who had gone on to predominantly white institutions. They had been in an environment where they themselves were trying to study this thing that we call black theology and this place that we call the black church by themselves in a vacuum, whereas I had gone to a historically black college where that was the center of our focus, where that was our context.
TAYLOR DAVIS: I do think there is something to be said about being in a place where everyone looks like you and everyone wants the best for you, especially for undergrad.
MARTIN: This is Taylor Davis.
DAVIS: Because undergrad is such a molding period in your time, and you need as much support as possible. You don't need to be fighting your whole way through.
MARTIN: You might remember Taylor didn't pass one of her nursing classes last year so she couldn't graduate with her friends.
DAVIS: I mean, you know, the last time I spoke with NPR, like, it was - I told you guys that I wasn't graduating, that I had to postpone it to 2016 and how, you know, I've always known that 2015 would be a life-changing year because I assumed that'd be the year I would graduate and, like, you know, start my adult life. It was still life-changing, but in the way I had never expected.
MARTIN: Life changing because she said she learned how to fail and get back up again. She learned how to check her ego and do the work to get where she wanted to go, and she is stronger for it. We're happy to report Taylor took the class again, and this time, she nailed it.
DAVIS: When I got my scores back - when I tell you, I literally start screaming, and I break out into praise and worship.
MARTIN: Taylor's going to celebrate by doing some traveling, then she'll take her board exams this summer. She wants to work full-time as a nurse, but she's also thinking about other options long-term, maybe law school.
DAVIS: I actually took my LSAT last year, so we're going where it leads me. I mean, the power of possibilities - that is - that's been, like, my mantra ever since I learned I was going to be in school an extra year. I feel like God gave that quote to me. There's power in your possibilities. And for me, what that means is you literally control your destiny, and you have the ability to do great and miraculous things if only you would believe that. And that's where I'm at right now.
MARTIN: That was Taylor Davis and Kevin Peterman, two Howard University alumni talking about life after college.