Every day is a day closer to graduation. It’s one less exam, one discussion post less, but after 17 years of having my educational career, my life, planned out for me, it will all come to an end. From middle school to high school and from high school to college we were all told the same thing, “in high school your teachers aren’t as lenient”, “there’s no extra credit in college”, “you do everything on your own in college.” Well those were all lies! As a senior in college I still get extra credit, my professors are nicer than my high school teachers, and I email my advisors every week. There may be a formula that many use to go through life but what’s the formula for postgrad? The formula usually goes a little like, going to school to get a successful job to support your family and eventually retire, but how do you go from school to a successful job, a happy life?
There’s really no structure or community to help you navigate this chapter of your life. In college finding roommates was easy enough where you could go on Facebook, school app (e.g., BullsConnect), or even get assigned a random roommate. After graduating, how do you find roommates in a new city… And for them to be random, is a little sketchy. The support system we had in college is not the same after college and I really don’t think it’s talked about enough. Not everyone knows how to apply to jobs, interview correctly, do their taxes, rent an apartment without being scammed, the list goes on. Graduate school for me and for many others, is a safety blanket where we don’t have to think about this unknown scary freedom. I guess figuring out this unplanned stage of our lives (outside of the school system) is something we all have to go through but it doesn’t make it any less lonely.
At this point in our lives we have to become our own guidance counselors and advisors and really take care of ourselves. We all have to remember to never compare our lives or success to anyone else and it’s probably a good idea to have a therapist on speed dial. And because we’re in our twenties we get to hop from job to job and figure out what we like and don’t like. We get to move to a different state or a different country just because we want to. We can even go back home and live with our parents because we’ll never have that opportunity again. We have this opportunity to try anything we want postgrad! Advise yourself to go crazy before going into your thirties <3.