So, is graduation coming up for anyone else? Is it just me, or is it creating an existential crisis for you? I doubt it’s just me, so let’s talk through it.
I’m sure you all are no strangers to fear, rejection, and wanting to control every single aspect of your future. If that doesn’t ring a bell, hi, that sums up me in my state right now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thriving and enjoying life, going to concerts, hanging out with my friends, and experiencing senioritis (If you needed a sign to skip class, this is that sign), but stationed in the very back of my psyche is the reminder that true adulthood is coming up, and that job application needs to be submitted, and I haven’t checked my LinkedIn in a while, and just what am I going to do with my life?Â
I used to cry at the mere thought of graduating college and getting a “real” job because I didn’t want a “real job,” and what does a “real” job even look like for me? I had major dreams of being a star and attaining a personality that people couldn’t get enough of. If you can’t tell, Hannah Montanna raised me, but the older I got, the more realistic I forced myself to be. And here lies the birth of all my career anxieties and the resting place, six feet in the ground of all my dreams.
If you could look back at little me, and I’m sure little you, you probably had a different plan for adulthood. If you’re one of the lucky people who has always known what they wanted to do and dared to see it through, I am so jealous but also in total awe of you. I want to be famous (don’t judge, I’m being vulnerable right now), and experience things that make life worth living, defined by me as traveling, attending fashion shows, meeting people, and making a career based on me, but that’s not exactly how everything is playing out right now, despite my heavy manifestations.
Somewhere along the way, I lost that five-year-old spark for my future, the desire to make myself heard and seen no matter the obstacles stopping me. I so desperately want that back, the confidence and sass that Disney Channel instilled in me to be myself and do what I want to do for the rest of my life. As I mentioned, reality set in, and that young spark fizzled. Finally, my constant yearning for adulthood caught up to me.
Now, I want to interject. I’m a happy person and I’m a grateful person, but there’s still a piece of me that was lost to the career pipeline. Stability and consistency now fuel my intentions, leading me to pick a different career path, which landed me where I am now.
So here I am, less than two months out from graduation, not even feeling accomplished because I’m terrified that the career I chose is me settling. I don’t doubt that I’ll enjoy postgrad life and entering the workforce, but I am petrified that I will never honor the five-year-old me who thought I’d be the next Hannah Montana. Of course, I don’t think I would’ve been the next Hannah Montana anyway, but you get the sentiment. The anxieties I have centered around my future, making money, and choosing a more realistic path reshaped all I thought my future would be.
I am never one to be so doom and gloom, at least not the entirety of our talk here, but I wanted to be candid. On the bright side, and I hope you take this to heart, it is never too late to find yourself, reevaluate, and push yourself to do what you can to achieve the life you know you deserve. I might be stuck, lack some courage, and try to wait for everything to be perfectly aligned to feel comfortable pursuing it, but I know that somehow, someway (and hopefully soon), I will fulfill the life I dream of.
So don’t let your career anxieties be where your dreams die. Find some way to make your dreams flourish. You owe it to all the versions of yourself that coexist in you presently. #loveya