I’m a week out of college and I already feel lost
If you’re new here, I graduated from UCLA almost two weeks ago. Although I was incredibly sad to see my college years and overall academic career come to an end, I was excited to have a break from the unending academic stress I’d been enduring since roughly 2003. But now here I am, sitting in my new apartment, wondering what my next step is going to be. And, dare I say it, I’d like to have some of that academic stress back.
For the past 18 years, school has been my home base. It’s always been my “thing”: I grew up a proud teacher’s pet, lived for good grades, and catered my entire existence to what was going on in my classes. And all throughout my education, from elementary school through to senior year of high school, I, like everyone else, was always told something along the lines of “Get good grades and get involved so you can get into a good college.” And I did that. And then I got to my good college and was told “Get good grades and get involved so you can get a good job.”
And now I’m here. I’m graduated with a good GPA and a decent enough roster of extra curriculars on my resume. And I’m on the edge of the “next move” that’s going to propel the rest of my life forward. I’m at the end of what my first 21 years have been preparing me for.
So now what?
This is the first time in my life, and in the lives of most recent graduates, that things aren’t clearly mapped out. There are some general next steps (get a job in our preferred field, build up some income, become financially independent, etc.,) but no set plan to map us all through the next 18 years of our careers similarly to what we previously had in the education system. We’ll have to just figure it out as we individually go along, and can’t really look too far ahead because we can’t say for sure that we know what’s coming for us.
Education funneled us through a tried and true route to success, but once we’ve exited, it feels like we’re flailing into monotony, lost and unsure of what to strive for next other than a “good job.”
At least that’s just how I feel.
In thinking about this, it now makes complete sense to me why many people feel the need to go immediately into graduate school (when sometimes not entirely necessary) after getting their Bachelor’s. It also explains why I’ve had my fair share of late night identity crises that ended in me googling law and journalism programs. Education is all we know, and being without its rigid structure leaves too much open for interpretation, too much room for human error.
What I’m trying to get at with all this rambling is that I feel a little purposeless. I’m in unprecedented territory, an eerie limbo between life stages. It makes me wonder if my mood will change once I get employment and enter the workforce. It makes me feel anxious for the possible repetitive and underwhelming routine that could be looming.
It also makes me feel guilty for not making the most of this unique gray area time I have right now. For the first time in 18 years, I have both no academic nor employment responsibilities. The only duties I have are to make sure that I am clean and fed, and that my apartment doesn’t fall apart. I should be taking this time to dive deep into my passions, explore my creativity, and make strides in my hobbies and interests to eventually show that I got something out of this time. It’s a similar feeling many had in March 2020 at the beginning of quarantine, but I am now experiencing it in the absence of four college classes. Who knows how long I’ll be able to live this far detached from obligation. Now’s my chance to thrive and blossom.
But a lot of the time, I’ve been sitting on YouTube. Or TikTok. Or Twitter. Or taking a nap for the first time in three years.
I’ve been going between feelings of intense guilt followed by immense pride, telling myself things like “I deserve this break,” after kicking myself for not squeezing every second of productivity out of each of my inevitably numbered free days. But do I deserve it? What did I really do? Some classes (most of them via my laptop screen), some papers, some exams that would have been abundantly more difficult if taken in an actual lecture hall. The digitization of my last one and a half years of college has given me the assumed ability to belittle all of my accomplishments. How quickly I forget the months of my closing quarters of college where I had little to no social life, desperately trying to complete assignments to appease my anxious mind just to be able to get a good night’s sleep.
Right now, I feel as though I need that well-known stress of lectures and readings and papers to keep me on a tight schedule where I then make the time to fit in my true hobbies and interests. I’ve grown more and more dissatisfied with the activities I do in my free time (writing, cooking), and I feel that is partially due to the fact that I now have seemingly endless time to do them. When I was under the clock, I pushed myself to produce something of value in a short amount of time, but now I’m stuck staring at a blank notes document for a whole day, or turning my nose up at everything I reluctantly throw together for dinner.
Something that has been bringing me pause is that this phase in my life is not permanent. While I’ve been putting in efforts to establish my own productive practice in my duty-less days (workout, get a matcha, run errands/grocery shop, write), I want to keep some distance from getting too comfortable. Before I know it, I’ll be starting a new job and will have to establish a whole new routine. Since I hate change more than I hate canned tuna (that’s to say: a lot), my own self-made limbo has future me’s best interest in mind. The less engrained I become in a routine, the easier it will be to eventually establish a new one. This middle ground, while probably best for my future self’s anxiety, is my former star-student self’s worst nightmare.
I was unaware of how hard post-grad depression could hit. I partially blame the education system, and I partially blame myself. I recognize that this weird phase in my life won’t last forever, but finding a happy medium while also feeling productive and fulfilled has proven to be quite difficult. Hopefully a more structured routine will present itself when employment does, but I can bet you that when that day comes, I will most likely be wishing for these wishy-washy days back.
