Oh no. College is over.
The diploma is mounted in you’re family office at home, only for the frame to collect dust. This piece of paper is what you have been working toward for basically your entire life. So now what?
What happens after you graduate, in four steps.
1. Relaxation
You get to spend all that money you got as a present, hell yes. Going out on a Tuesday? Sure. Spontaneous road trip to the beach up to Plum Island? Oh yes please. Laying by the pool, while “looking for a job” for about two hours a day. Thinking you should be able to get a job in a month or so, you enjoy this time. During this time you’ll more than likely be moving back into your parents house, or with a friend, or crashing on someone’s couch. But you love having no responsibilities, taking a breather, catching up on sleep and getting to relax. If you’re lucky, this might be the time your parents send you on a fabulous vacation to the Caribbean or buy you a ticket for Bonnaroo.
2. Realization
After your sleeping til noon/ eating cold pizza for breakfast and the graduation present money runs out, you might wake up on a Monday morning thinking, what the hell am I doing. You start to look for a job, polish up your resume, work on networking, and look for a job. You think, eh I’ll be good, I have a degree, work experience, great during interviews, this will be a breeze. A few weeks in you might start to lose hope, you take interviews for job that you know you’re overqualified for, and yet pay almost nothing. You start to lower your expectations, your parents are probably on your case about it, because you can’t live in their basement forever.
3. Panic
Now it’s really time to get it in gear, you realize it might take a while to find a job that you want, that you feel pays enough to be comfortable, use your degree, and feel proud that you landed. Your parents are probably getting very annoyed, but you swear to them that you’re trying, but it’s just a different time, getting a job is hard. You were a History major, why would you want a job in sales? The job market can be bleak; college didn’t prepare you for this. College didn’t teach us what to do when we can’t find a job after we graduate. They didn’t prepare us for the uncertainty, for what were expected to do when landing your dream job fresh out of school doesn’t exactly pan out. At this stage you’ll probably get a little bored, but you have to admit that it is nice to have no responsibilities. You sort of secretly revel in having all this free time. But the pressure in enormous, and it’s really annoying having to answer the “So have you gotten a job yet?” You probably will wake up in the middle of the night sweating cause you have no idea what you’re doing with your life.
4. Acceptance
After a while you’ll probably realize that, you know what it’s fine, I’m smart, I have a degree, a great personality, I work hard, I’ll find a job eventually. You can land an internship, volunteer, get some experience, what’s the rush? You’ll find something to fill your time. I didn’t realize what I actually wanted to do until about six months after I graduated college, but I’m glad I waited, because I’m about 99 % sure that what I figured out what I want to, and could do, for the rest of my life, and be satisfied. You might actually figure out that going back to school might be a good choice. You’ll probably want to get a part time job, make some money, not feel totally worthless, and that’s totally OK. If you’re lucky enough, your parents will understand and just be glad that you’re trying. You’ll probably end up finding out a lot about yourself, what you want to do, practice your interview skills, pad out your resume with some internships or volunteer work. It’s your life anyway, don’t feel the need to rush ahead to get it started.
Here are some quick links if you feel down on your luck and the pressures of being home are getting to you: