Welcome to Unprepareds Anonymous, where the anxious Collegiettes freak out about our uncertain futures after graduation. Some of us are juniors, most of us are seniors, and some of us are underclassmen. Wherever you are on the class totem pole, you are kidding yourself if you say you do not have some sort of anxiety about the future.
I interviewed my dear friend named Jule, a junior at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, at our first Her Campus meeting:
Me: “So, Jule, do you have a plan for after graduation?”
Jule: “To quote the wise and articulate Phoebe Buffay: ‘I don’t even have a ‘pla’.’”
Me: “Well said. Do you ever feel anxious about June 2016?”
Jule: “I pretend that date does not exist. I only think of May and July.”
Me: “How do you deal with that repression?”
Jule: “I don’t. I focus on the now.”
I think I can speak for everyone in college when I say we need to take a giant chill pill. We have all heard about this dark and scary place that lies ahead of us: the real world. People make life after UMass seem like the most terrifying time in the world. But the truth is that what actually lies ahead of you is your life. You are going to get a job, an apartment, and you are probably going to stay friends with the kids you met at UMass. Chances are that if you spend enough time with some people, you probably have some things in common. Going by this logic, you guys might want to live near each other purely out of interest. I know that two of my best friends want to live in or near Boston when we move out of our parents’ houses, and you will probably want to live near your college friends, too. Just think about that when you start to erroneously worry that these are the best years of your life. The best is yet to come, and it does not involve a bottle of Rubinoff or an all-nighter in Dubois.
What you need to do is not spend a sleepless night tossing and turning because you did not get the summer internship of your dreams. What you need to do is be proud of where you are right now! Being in college is something to be proud of. As far as our careers go, let’s be real, UMass is a fabulous school and employers would be lucky to have us. We do not need to worry that we are not going to get a job. I think that we all need to have a little faith in ourselves.
Like Elle Woods says in Legally Blonde: