It’s less than two weeks until graduation, and you don’t know even know what you want to wear that day, let alone where you will be living after you take those long strides across the stage, grab your diploma, shake a few hands, and take hundreds of photos. Your main concerns that day should be to walk, shake, and smile. Sounds easy enough, but odds are, most of you will be gripping those diplomas as you stress about what life will be like after college. In reality, the only thing that should be going through your mind that day is how proud you should be of yourself. Graduating college is no easy feat, and memories of graduation are something that you will cherish forever. So just relax, take a deep breath, and celebrate with your family and friends, collegiettes!
We know what you’re thinking: this is the end of the world because you will have to be away from your friends, get a real job, support yourself, and basically hop on a train with a one way ticket departing from Fun Town and arriving at Snoozefest. Well yes, it might be true that you will need to get a “big person job” soon, but the fears of post-graduation are really as big or little as you make them.
It sounds cliché, but college isn’t like high school; the friends you make in college are based off of a genuine affection for one another. The days of frenemies are long behind us and you aren’t forced to hang out with these people, you choose to. If you want to stay friends with someone, make that choice and stay in contact with them. It’s as simple as sending a text or writing on their Facebook wall. The internet is a beautiful thing. Utilize it.
When it comes to finding that “big person job,” it’s all about your attitude and where you are in understanding what you’d like to do. True, they say college is a time meant for learning who you are and figuring out where you fit in in this big world of ours, but life isn’t like the movies. We aren’t all Elle Woods; we can’t all randomly decide to take the LSATs, take our chihuahua, and follow our good looking boyfriend to Harvard, graduate at the top of our class, and find an even cuter lawyer boyfriend than the one we originally chased after. Not everyone has that life changing moment in college when they discover who they are and realize what they want to do with the rest of their life. If our goals were as easy to attain as Elle’s, most of us would probably already be jet setting singers married to Ryan Gosling with houses in the South of France. Nowadays, however, the average person will change careers seven times. The work sphere is turning away from the whole nine to five, work for the same company, and retire at age fifty kind of thing. If you don’t want that, don’t do it; there’s no rush. Independence is a scary, yet wonderful thing. It can open your eyes to new ideas and allow you to learn new things about yourself you might not have known. It’s better to take the time to figure out what makes you happy in life now and avoid that midlife crisis later in life. You don’t want to be that parent who decides that wearing leather pants are a good thing at the age of forty-five. You would be wrong, and they’re not.
What we hope you get from this article, ladies, is the idea that you are not losing anything as graduation approaches. Graduation is a celebration of you and everything you have accomplished in your life thus far. You’ve come a long way from making macaroni art in kindergarten, enjoy it! Graduation is the final step out of the bubble they have slowly been weaning us off of since high school graduation. When it comes to your friends, genuine friends will make the effort and support you in all of your endeavors. When you get your first “big person job,” they will be the first ones to congratulate you on your success. They’ll also be the first ones you take on your big private plane when the big bucks start rolling in. Did I mention “big person jobs” pay better? That’s also a plus! The main thing to remember is that what career you choose in life doesn’t define you as a person; life is short, so make memories with the ones you love and love yourself. The rest will come.