Congratulations graduating class of 2020! You’ve made it to your final year of college after years of hard work. So… what next? It feels like you’ve just overcome some of the biggest hurdles of your life and now everyone—professors, parents, friends—wants to know what mountain you’ll climb next. But… what will you do? What do you want? How do you know what you want? How do you become successful at doing what you want? And shouldn’t you know all this by now?!
I know it’s hard to keep these questions from developing into a full-on move into the woods, backpack across America type break down. But, let me assure you, you don’t need the definite answers right now. They’re questions that people ask themselves all their lives. Even people in grad schools, professional schools, and careers wonder what their next step will be. Because life isn’t a mountain, it’s a marathon. And the answers we come up with now are likely to change. Ask any adult around you that seems to have it all together and they’ll tell you that they ended up in a place they never could have imagined in their 20s.
So class of 2020, how do we prepare to go off into the world? Well, the truth is, we may never feel prepared. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t. We’ve gotten through college, and hopefully, we’ve learned from it. We are smarter and more resilient than we were when this all started. We’ve overcome more than maybe we thought we could. So, if you take anything away from this closing chapter, I hope it’s that you’re more capable than you know.
And now that you know that you’ll be able to face anything that comes your way after walking across the stage. Take the leap. Put yourself out there. Seek more education or more experience or more adventure or all three. Look for the opportunities that are presented and take them. You don’t have to have it all figured out, now or ever. But now’s the time to be brave and move forward anyway.
We’ve got this!