Things I Wish I’d Known about Life after Graduation

Graduation day was one of the saddest days of my life.

For such a celebratory event, I shed a lot of tears. I still remember the moment after the ceremony ended. I had a diploma in my hands and a tassel flittering against my face, but tears were rolling down my cheeks. Big, heavy tears.

I walked across the stage with dear friends, but now I was leaving the auditorium alone, and the weight of that moment almost broke me. I stood around and hugged my friends to congratulate them, but I also didn’t know if I would ever see some of them again. I took pictures with beloved professors wishing they understood what an impact they’d made on my life, but knowing I would no longer sit under their teaching.

I’m not prepared for this, I thought, They’re kicking me out of the place I call home and telling me I can’t come back.

I remember the sadness that overcame me when I locked my dorm room for the last time and handed in the key. I was now locked out of the room I had spent so many busy days and late nights in. While there were many realities I had thought about in anticipation of graduation, this was not one of them.

I knew graduation day had to come sometime, but it was never something I dreamed about. Of course, I was excited for the next season of my life, and I looked forward to all the opportunities I would have now that I wasn’t tied to a campus or a class schedule, but I wasn’t ready to smile about it just yet. I still needed to grieve.

As a beloved professor of mine said in my senior seminar class, “Life comes for us all.”

And while your graduation day may have been much more celebratory than mine, we all inevitably come to that moment where we’re forced to ask, “What now?”

Some of you will be blessed with a job right out of college, and others will be searching for months. But no matter where your occupational status lies, these are a few things I wish I had known about post-grad life:

 

1. Post Grad Depression is Real.

Before graduating, I had never even heard the term before. But in the months and weeks after graduation, I found myself feeling a range of emotions I had never expected. It felt like a rug had been pulled out from beneath my feet, and in a striking wave of confusion and discombobulation, a subtle but strong depression crept in. I felt alone because I was no longer surrounded by constant community. I felt anxious because the adult world I was pushed into was not a place I knew how to belong in. I felt lost because the goal I had been working towards since the day I opened my first school book was now accomplished.

I had gotten really good at being a student. I became quite astute at meeting each challenge a new semester brought my way because I knew it would be over in a mere 16 weeks. In many ways, my life had been segmented into a series of small semester-sized goals, and now that I was entering into real adult life there were no more segments. All the other goals I had were 10 years down the road, so what was I supposed to work towards for the current 16 weeks?

I was bombarded by people congratulating me and also wanting to know what I was doing next. While their curiosity was only natural, my mind raced every time. What was I supposed to tell them? I guess the next thing was trying to find a job…but what job? My dream job was not going to be my first job, so I struggled with what kind of jobs to look for. I quickly found that merely searching within my field was not enough on the myriad of job searching apps I had collected. Searching for jobs within my field would only produce a long list of jobs I wasn’t qualified for. The terms junior, assistant, and entry-level quickly became my friends.  I spent hours pouring through a million jobs that weren’t right, and a hundred more hours catering 10 different resumes for 10 different applications, providing the same information in every online form, and flinching every time I hit “submit.”

The longer I spent without a new thing to go to, the more lost I felt. I had gone from the hustling and bustling life of a college student to the dark and dreary life of unemployment in a big city where my friends no longer lived. I felt purposeless, alone, and overwhelmed. After several desperate Google searches and many tearful questions posed to close friends, I began to hear a chorus of “me too” or “I feel the same way.” Slowly, I began to feel a little less alone.

And that’s what I want you to know, dear friend. Postgrad depression is a real thing, even for people who do not have tendencies towards anxiety or depression. It does not mean you have failed. Even if graduating was a happy and exciting time for you, you will likely hit that lull that tends to follow. These moments are incredibly important to surround yourself with friends and family who will support you and remind you who you are. Your worth does not lie in your job or your lack of employment. Your worth is not found in how poorly (or well) you handle big transitions or how clumsily you stumble into this next phase of your life. Your worth does not come from how much money you make, where your first apartment (or parent’s basement) is, or how many times you’ve questioned your life’s goals and purpose. You have a loving Father who delights in you and stands with open arms calling you to be still and know that He is God.

* Note: If you have a cool summer job to go to before you go back home and start job searching, these feelings might be delayed. That’s okay. Even if it doesn’t hit you for several months after graduation, it is still valid.

 

2. Starting Fresh is Hard.

I pulled the lanyard from my pocket and flipped through it to find the right key. It was the second key after the square keychain. It was gold and had three little ridges at the top. I stuck the key into the lock and turned it, flinging open the door; my door. This was home now. My first apartment. I dropped my bags in the entryway, kicked off my shoes, and headed straight to flop onto my bed—the only home that ever felt universal to me, no matter where in the world I landed. I was exhausted. I had spent a week getting used to my new job and had just gotten home from my new church. I saw people every day but was truly known by none. I missed being known. I missed hearing footsteps walking through the hallway. I missed sitting down at the dinner table with my family and telling one another about our day.

Everything was so new, and even though it was fun and exciting, and the possibilities felt like they would never end, it was still hard. Unknowns are exhausting.  It’s okay for these emotions to coexist. Is it comfortable to live in this tension? No. But the more the Lord teaches me, the more I learn that the majority of our life, God is calling us to live in the tension between good and evil, between love and fear, between safety and risk. Living in this tension tends to make the exhausting things even more exhausting, but the good news is that it does get easier.

Let me say that again: It does get easier.

This is a season, and it will pass. The things that you’re struggling with right now will get easier as you learn the ropes. The things that you’re scared of will get less scary as you gain more experience. But knowing that it gets better doesn’t mean that it’s any less hard right now. So what do you do in the meantime?

Give yourself space.

When I first started my new job, I knew it would be a huge transition. I also knew that I don’t always handle transition very smoothly. So I gave myself three weeks to just do that. I did not schedule or plan any other hard things in those three weeks. I acknowledged that I might see my worst sides come out under the stress, and I allowed myself to feel those things without beating myself up for not doing better. I gave myself three weeks where my expectations were very low. I did not expect to excel or be the best at my new job right away. I just let myself be. And you know what? It was hard. I did not enjoy those first few weeks. I felt drastically ill-prepared and beyond stressed. But every time I heard that inner dialog telling me to do better or condemning me for feeling this way, I silenced it. I gave myself space for about three weeks, and at the end of those three weeks, it was better. The hard things were easier. The overwhelming things were less overwhelming. And even though it was still a huge learning curve, I now felt like it was feasible.

So let the hard things be hard. Let the new things be new. Let the overwhelming things be overwhelming. But know that they won’t always be that way and give yourself grace in the meantime.

 

3. Adulting is a Huge Learning Curve.

Let me be real with you for a second: I thought I was pretty well equipped for becoming a “real” adult. I knew how to cook and clean; I could wash dishes, do the laundry, pay the bills, and keep a schedule. Overall, I was raised to be a pretty responsible kid. But that didn’t mean jumping into it all at once was a breeze. There’s a learning curve involved.

Just because I knew how to cook a killer meal didn’t mean I had the energy to do that after getting home from a full workday. Just because I knew how to clean a whole house didn’t mean I could always keep up with the never-ending to-do list (but let’s be real, that is an everybody thing.) Just because I could pay the bills didn’t mean I didn’t forget a couple, and just because I am responsible didn’t mean I knew how taxes worked. When I went through orientation for my new job, they had a whole session going through my benefits package. Was I adult enough to have a job with a benefits package? Yes. Did I know what any of it meant? Heck no. Most of the time I was just nodding along in hopes that a Google search would clarify things for me later. And don’t get me started on my new job. Going from doing my homework anywhere I wanted and in any way that worked best for me to sitting in the same cubicle every day and following a set of predetermined processes and systems was a huge learning curve.

The thing that made this hard was not the learning curve itself. It was the fact that I felt like everyone was waiting to see if I launched or if I would be “another one of those entitled millennials” that wasn’t willing to work/was not capable of being responsible/just wanted to move back home and leech off of their parents. I was scared that if I didn’t do a good job adjusting to this new season, I would have a big label slapped on me that read, “Failure to Launch.”

The biggest thing I learned from this season is that I am human. Shocking, right? But in every new season of my life, I’ve tried to transition perfectly without being awkward or clumsy at all. That’s not how it works. It’s okay that there’s a learning curve. It’s okay to not know what you don’t know. It’s okay to learn as you go. And you know what else? Everyone else is human too. Even those who may judge or criticize you are not free from those utterly human moments of awkwardly stumbling through a life change or transition. Everyone has an awkward junior high phase. You know what I’m talking about because you had it, too. You wore things that you now laugh at, you regret all the times you refused to shower or put a little too much makeup on, and you were into bands or celebrities that you cringe at now. So, if everyone has that phase, why wouldn’t everyone else have the “learning to be an adult” phase? It’s been an awkward learning curve for everyone. You aren’t the first, and you won’t be the last. So embrace it and let yourself learn.

 

4. Your Early Twenties are Magical.

WHAAAT? If post-grad depression is real, starting fresh is hard, and adulting is a huge learning curve, how can your early twenties be magical? Tension. We always live in the tension. Your early twenties can be both extremely difficult and incredibly magical because this season is a season of settling into your identity, which is both confusing and freeing. 

 

There are going to be moments when you feel completely out of place or lost, but there will also be moments when you feel at home in unexpected places. There might be a moment when your boss affirms your talents or makes space for you to work on a project you’ve been wanting to work on. There might be a moment at one of your many college friends’ weddings when you’re reunited with those who know you best. There might be a moment you weren’t expecting when you feel more like YOU than you’ve felt in a long time. There might be a moment when you’re sitting down to dinner with your family or with people who’ve become like family and you know that even if everything has changed, the important things have stayed the same. 

 

And that’s the magic of your early twenties, isn’t it? You not only have biological family, you now have college friends who will always be your home away from home, whether you’re traveling across state lines and need a place to crash, or whether you’re all fumbling around in a new city and sit down for dinner together. So you can let the hard things be hard, and the new things be new…TOGETHER.

 

I can’t stress this point enough. When the hard things are hard and the new things are new – talk about it with your friends. I can’t count how many people, even months after graduation, echoed a resounding, “me too” when I expressed the things I felt during those months. Even as a friend of mine helped me edit this post, she said, “Goodness! I relate to this so much, but it seemed like no one else got this after graduation. I should have talked to you!”  I promise that there are people in your life who are feeling the same way you are, so take that little leap to be vulnerable about it because you will both end up feeling a little less alone.

 

As the dust settles from your big life transition, you get to experience a little bit of the magic of your early twenties. Even when the hard things are hard, the good things are still good. You have the freedom to build a life you like, the agency to take action on the things you don’t, and the flexibility to learn along the way. You can make the food you want to make, rather than relying on a school cafeteria. Some days I drink spinach smoothies for breakfast, and other days I eat ice cream for dinner…because I can. When you have free time, you can decide how to fill it, rather than filling it with the next homework assignment that’s due. You can stay up till midnight reading for fun, go to the art museum with a friend, or go to bed at 8pm. It’s YOUR choice! It feels good when your choices are your own. Good or bad, they’re yours. You can learn the things you like and fill your life with them, whether that’s facials, morning coffee, lunchtime walks, afternoons at the beach, or just a cheap glass of wine. 

 

Your early twenties are for learning how to be a person, but they’re also for learning how to be you. So go ahead – be the young professional in a pencil skirt and chipped nail polish; be the young professional who works a day job they hate while working on a passion project they love; be the guy who lands his dream job while couch surfing and apartment searching. You’re in process, but you’re gonna turn out just fine. The early twenties are one heck of a roller coaster, so why not just let yourself enjoy the ride?

 

 

 

 

 

Special thanks to Natalie Wellinghoff for lending her editing services for this post. If you want more information about how she can help you edit your blog, book, or writing check out her website wordsmadenew.com