“Your college friends are the best friends you will ever have.”
Who has ever heard a variation of this sentiment? I’ve heard it phrased a million different ways, but ultimately, it communicates the same grim reality that so many experience. The social scene at college has its perks, to be sure. You’re surrounded by people the same age, in the same life stage, facing the same challenges, with the same unorthodox schedule, and the same desire to get a little crazy and go on late-night adventures together. So, of course, it would be logical that these peers you spent 24/7 with for several significant years of your life would become lifelong friends.
But there’s also a haunting, foreboding sentiment in those words. There’s a pessimism and a hopelessness that your quality of friendships will only go downhill from here. For some, this is their lived reality. For others, they have fought hard against this tendency. But most will agree that there’s some truth to it.
I was just talking about this with my small group leader, who has seen the transformational results of simply creating spaces where isolated adults can experience community together. When discussing this “downhill after college” mentality, he emphatically asked, “Why do we accept that? We should refuse to accept that!”
Looking Back at Life Post-College
I was recently asked to return to my alma mater and speak to a class of college seniors about to graduate. It prompted a strange moment of introspection, realizing how long it’s been since I hung up my cap and gown. In some ways, it feels like yesterday. In others, it’s a distant memory. I still have friends from college I keep up with and professors I’m connected to, but I also have many years of experience and professional growth since that day.
Though I shared helpful career advice with the class, what struck me as I looked around the room were the moments of panic, sadness, anticipation, anxiety, and intimidation that flashed across their faces. Graduating is exciting, but it can also be really scary. It doesn’t help that they’ve heard things like the “downhill after college” sentiments or negative Nancys’ grumbling about the job market.
Looking at the students in that room took me back to college Senior Kayla. She was grieving and scared and excited and thriving at the same time. She felt more confident in her professional skills than ever before, but she also felt the weight of the goodbyes. Post-grad Kayla was a mess. She worked a job that she frequently felt like a failure in, and she experienced an unexpected depth of post-grad depression. The post-grad years were some of the loneliest in her life. So, she feared that the sentiment was true – that she would never make such meaningful friendships ever again. She was a different person than the Kayla that unlocked her freshman dorm door, and she carried that new self back into spaces that knew previous versions of her, which only compounded the complex emotions of transition and losing the friends with whom she felt most known.
Now, I’m not trying to be a downer. I can stand before you today as my well-adjusted late-twenties adult self and say it all turned out okay. I made it through those years and came out the other side with a wonderful community and a very full, vibrant life. But here’s a reality I think we all need to remember: Just because it turned out okay doesn’t minimize the pain and grief that you experienced when you weren’t okay.
Going Back to College
Last weekend, I walked through the big wooden doors and sat in the small wooden seats of the same room where I walked across the stage and received my diploma. This time, I was there to cheer for friends celebrating the same milestone. But it struck me as strange to look back on my own graduation. On my own graduation day, I cried big, heavy tears and felt like I was losing more than I was gaining. However, as I sat in that room and sang our school’s song this time, I had compassion for my younger self, who couldn’t yet see all the wonderful things ahead.
That compassion for my younger self extended to all the students graduating that day and walking into their own unknowns. If you are a student who is about to graduate or just recently graduated from college, I am writing this post for you. I write as someone a few steps ahead of you on the road. I don’t know where your path will take you, but I can serve as a tour guide of sorts for the emotional landscape you’re currently navigating.
My Experience with Post-Grad Depression
After I had just graduated college, I felt so alone. Theoretically, I felt like all the adults in my life should understand how much I was grieving and how unsteady the future felt. But instead, I was met with a chorus of “congratulations” that felt perplexing given my state of grief. So, if I can do anything with this post, I hope it can be coming alongside you and validating the complex emotions you feel. You may be excited and ecstatic to move into this next season of life, but you also might be wrestling with anxiety and uncertainty that makes you feel alone. For that very reason, I invite you to travel back in time with me to 1 year after my own graduation. I wrote several blog posts about my experience, and rather than regurgitate them for you from my own hazy memory, I’d rather introduce you to Post-Grad Kayla — or you, one year from today.
Resources for Recent College Graduates
This is a roundup of all the posts buried deep in my blog’s archives that might be exactly what you need to read right now.
1. A Letter to the Soon-To-Be College Graduate
This is an open letter reflecting on those last weeks of college before you graduate and the first weeks afterward. It doesn’t hold back from acknowledging the good, the bad, and the ugly in a raw and authentic way that doesn’t sugarcoat or minimize my real experiences from those days. When I first wrote this letter, I got all sorts of texts and messages from friends, saying it helped them feel less alone. I hope it does the same for you.
2. 4 Things I Wish I’d Known about Life After Graduation
This was one of the top posts I wrote after graduation that kept getting shared on social media because it put into words the experiences of so many friends and acquaintances who thought they were the only ones who felt this way. When people read it, I got hit with a chorus of “me too” and “I feel the same way”s. The good news is that though this doesn’t hold me back from sharing my story of post-grad depression, it also provides words of encouragement and hope that I wish I’d had in that season.
3. How to Deal with Post-Grad Depression
My post about post-grad life got such a response that I felt compelled to keep the conversation going, so I asked a friend of mine who is now a licensed therapist to share her story of post-grad depression. There were many parts of my story she resonated with and many parts of her story that felt eerily familiar to me. Based on the feedback I had received from my previous post, I felt like there were probably many more people who felt the same way and just didn’t have words to explain it. So, in this post, Hannah put the experience into words and provided real-life advice for how to navigate and recover from post-grad depression.
Building a New Life Post-Graduation
If you recently graduated, you’re currently in transition. You need to find housing, a job, a community, and maybe even a church. Give yourself the grace to be “in transition.” Our transitional selves don’t usually have the same capacity as our high-functioning selves. You may need more time to rest, more time to yourself, more time to process your experience with a loved one, or more time to do things that bring you joy.
But as the days and weeks pass, you will start to find your new normal and start to build your new life. Things will feel less unsteady and less uncertain. You will get to enjoy more of the perks of being a full-fledged adult. And once you get there, maybe I’ll write a whole different blog post-roundup to help you find healthy rhythms as you settle into your community and career.
But for now, I think you have enough to process. So, if there’s anything I want you to remember, it’s:
- Give yourself grace
- You are not alone
- Together, we will adamantly reject the narrative that things only go downhill after college. From me, someone several years down the road, and even my small group leader who’s several decades down the road, we can attest that there is a very full, fulfilling life waiting for you.
