Graduating college feels like the last thing you have to check off before entering the so-called “real world.” It should feel like you accomplished something, because you did, something really great, but it doesn’t feel anything like you’d expect. It’s because of the part they forget to mention when college is over.
If you are anything like me, and by that I mean a privileged, upper-middle class, white person, your life probably looked something like this: first it was a pre-school, and then a solid K-8 education, a high school diploma, and finally a four-year university. Just like that, 22 years of your life mapped out basically from the start.
By the time you were four, every moment was perfectly planned. There was school you would get up to get ready for at 6. You might have put on a uniform, or maybe just jeans, then grabbed something that vaguely qualified as breakfast and went to the place where for 8 hours of the day you had a strict schedule of classes, assignments, lessons, etc. You had lunch at the same time, and due to the busy nature of your schedule, often ate the same thing you had the day before or for dinner the night prior.
After school was a blur of changing clothes and finding snacks before you had some sport to practice, instrument to master, or job to perform. Weekends were dedicated to catching up on the sleep, that between homework and showering, you never got during the week and seeing the few friends you weren’t totally sure you even really knew.
And it was good you did those things because the extracurricular activities and grades you got from lack of sleep were meant to make you look interesting enough for future schools to consider you worthy of their acceptance. Which they did. You got into a good college, moved away, found friends and passions, and graduated. Hooray! Congratulations!
But then what? After all that, the rest was up to you, and that is what they never really told you.
I think it is hidden in the fanfare and celebration of graduation — cap throwing and photo shoots in white dresses with champagne popping. The concept of what comes next kind of gets lost in the confetti. Sure, the rest of your life is open to you, but what does that mean? What is supposed to come next?
The structure of our society plans out the first 22 years of our lives so rigidly it almost seems ridiculous to assume that we should know how to navigate the next 22+ for ourselves. There is no game plan. There are no more rule books. There are a million and one paths you can take, but none are considered “standard” anymore. All the organization and structure you have become so accustomed to your whole life just goes out the window.
For some, I am sure this is the best part. Those who don’t subscribe to the life us Type A individuals crave must thrive once they walk across that stage with a generic piece of paper their hands (because the real thing isn’t coming for 4–6 weeks).
But, for those of us who struggle every year with the changing seasons alone, the changing of life comes as a blatant crisis. Should I have a job or apartment lined up? Am I going to be at my job forever? What qualifies as healthy eating? Should I take some time to travel? When am I supposed to exercise? How long before I’m expected to settle down? Where can I make friends? Do I go out too much? How am I going to support a family? When should I start putting money into a retirement plan? How does a retirement plan work? Is 22 too young for a mid-life crisis?!
Suddenly it is not about what the world expects of you anymore, but about what you want. Do you know what you want, and how do you know? Did you ever even want any of what came before?
If you ask me, in all the time I was maintaining the structure, subscribing to the plan, I so infrequently considered, in a real sense, the possibility of what could happen when all the planning stopped.
Not, it’s scary. They don’t tell you how hard it is after you leave that campus. The choices are no longer soccer or tennis (which was never really a choice anyway), but about what city you want to live in. It’s not an either-or question now because there is an entire world’s worth of options. The stakes feel higher too. Its not whether you fail a quiz, it’s about how you want your life to look.
And we are expected to navigate it seamlessly — when we were hardly expected to navigate the first part of our lives — after all this is what it was all leading up to. Everything up to this point was just a series of accomplishments, tasks meant to be completed before moving on. Now there is no checklist, no linear path forward.
College is over, this is just the rest of your life. “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” So where do we go? Who do you talk to when suddenly all your friends are scattered across the country? Maybe it is just about being happy and not about what you are supposed to do. But, how do you find what makes you happy?
Maybe we should have planned for this…