The diploma looks real nice on the wall and you have lots of great memories of your college friends. But now what?
After years and years of being told what to learn and what to do, you are thrown into the big bad world of adulthood, and that can be quite an adjustment.
To a certain extent, you have experienced some of this before. When you were in high school, teachers took attendance and skipping a class got you in trouble. Then you discovered in college that many professors didn’t really keep track of whether or not you came to class. So you moved from a highly structured environment to an environment with considerably less imposed structure.
Only now, you are responsible for all the structure-for getting a job, for choosing a place to live, for choosing how to use your free time-this is what you have been waiting for and yet when it is staring you in the face, it can be intimidating.
Careers and Jobs
There are several phases we tend to go through in adult life. In that first phase, you are still defining who you are. It’s possible you will change your career goals in the next five to eight years as you gain work experience. When you are not one hundred percent sure what you want personally or professionally, then it is really hard to be confident around other people, particularly everyone who has known you since kindergarten who asks, “so, what are you doing now?”
Be assured that not being confident about your career choice is okay. In fact, no matter what you majored in, your college degree is a credential that can be used across a wide range of possible jobs and careers. So you majored in philosophy and now you think you want to teach? In many districts you can be a long term substitute teacher if you have a college degree. That type of experience will give you a taste of the teacher’s life and if you like it, you can pursue the proper credentials.
Don’t limit yourself to jobs within the career fields associated with your major. A bachelor’s degree guarantees that you have an overall well-rounded education that can be applied in many jobs. For example, suppose you majored in biology, thinking of becoming a doctor but you are not ready for medical school or no longer sure that it is the right career for you. You could get an entry level job in the health care field to check out how much you like that area. But you could also get a job in a corporation, particularly one where knowledge of biology is an advantage-an entry level job at a biotech corporation, for example.
Think also about the hobbies, community service work, and interests you have had for a long time; these in combination with your degree may lead to an interesting career. For example, if community service work required you to learn some special skills such as crisis line counseling, that skill can be used in a job, no matter what your major was.
Where to live
If you are graduating from college and you have no spouse or kids, this is the time in your life to explore where in the world you might want to live. It is a time for gaining the experiences that will be the foundation of the main part of your career, so you might as well try something interesting.
These days, it is relatively easy to explore possible places to live-to find out how much rent will cost, the weather, the general economy, and so forth. You can use the internet. With the internet you can also do the kind of networking and exploring that can lead you to an interesting job in an interesting place. You can decide that family is important so you want to stay within a day’s drive of your family or you can decide to go half way around the world to see what life is like there (keeping in mind that teaching English in a foreign country is always an option for you). If you even have an inkling that you might want to try living somewhere else, at least start looking at the types of jobs that are available and do some networking to get contacts in that area.
Rhythms of Life
In college, life revolves around the school term, whether that is quarters or semesters. At the end of the term, you turn in all your assignments and you get a grade. Then you are ready for the next term, which is really a new beginning with new classes.
Employment does not work this way. You might get an annual review and maybe that’s a little like getting a grade. But there are few natural beginning and end points the way there is in college. It will take some time to get used to the lack of grades, particularly if good grades were a major part of your motivation for getting things done.
Graduate School?
If the going gets painful out in the real world, you can always crawl back to the ivory tower and get a masters degree. Get a doctorate and a university job and you never have to leave the ivory tower again. But try to stay out in the world of work for at least three years. The reason is to gain a sense of mastery over some aspects of the full time job and world of work. The first year you work will involve a huge learning curve no matter what job you take. Yes, they taught you a lot of stuff in college, but applying it is another matter altogether. The second year is better and the third year is when you have a feeling of competency. Stay out there until you feel competent because that experience will be valuable to you in the long run.
Authority
When you are just out of school, everyone is likely to tell you that you are still wet behind the ears and that you don’t really know anything. When you try to get a job, you feel like you have to prove yourself in some way because of that type of attitude. The nice thing is that one of the greatest things you get from your twenties is experience, and this gives you a nice level of authority in your thirties and forties. In other words, you will not have to spend so much time and energy proving yourself in the future. Work on that right now and establish a good reputation. Even if you move into a different career world, some of that reputation will stay with you and help you.
Be Nice to You
The main thing is: be nice to yourself in these first few years of adulthood. You are learning something very complex for which your schooling cannot prepare you. You are going to try a lot of things, some of which will work really well and some of which will fail spectacularly. Learn from the failures and try to make a different type of mistake next time. There is no one who can tell you how or where you, in terms of your personality, will be able to work best. This is something you have to learn for yourself and your early post-college years are when you do this. It’s challenging, interesting, and it creates a wonderful foundation for the rest of your life.
