Life After College

After the applause dies down and the crowd disperses, what’s left? Life after college, your first few years of true adulthood, there’s more responsibility, yet more freedom, and more time to do what you actually love.

But why does it feel like this? Your early twenties sound like the ideal scenario, but they can present a unique array of challenges. The truth is, there will always be something, even when you’re in complete control, but if you’re waiting for everything to go well before you start enjoying life, then you’ll never enjoy life.

Feel your feelings, of course! But enjoy your blessings as well. Here are a few reasons why your twenties may not be enjoyable.

1. A Lack of Patience

Sometimes we’re so focused on getting that thing we’ve always dreamed of that we forget to enjoy the journey. It’s possible to be so wrapped up in accomplishing goals that we forget about everything else. Do you have goals or do your goals have you? Besides, we’re much more successful when were holistically happy.

2. Ungratefulness

Take inventory of all the good things in your life, even if they seem small and insignificant. There are instances where life is not enjoyable because we simply choose not to enjoy it, but usually we don’t know we’re making this horrible decision. Don’t be that person who doesn’t realize how good that have it until it’s gone. While striving for greater, be grateful for what you have.

3. Living for Others

Could the reason why you’re not enjoying your life be that you’re attempting to live someone else’s? It’s easier than you think to live a life that someone else created for you, especially if you love them. Their wants may have automatically become yours without you even noticing it. Living to meet other’s desires can also happen on a societal level. Making decisions to be who the world says people who look like you, who come from where you come from, should be can dim the soul.

4. Befriending the Wrong People

Our friends shape our experience of the world. You can go down the exact same path as someone else, but have a completely different experience because of who you went with. Examine those closest to you and your relationships with them. What do they look like? How do they make you feel?

5. Disregard for Mental and Emotional Health

Mental and emotional problems don’t just go away. In fact, if you ignore them, they can get worse. Although you may feel resilient, mental health challenges can affect us in ways we do not realize. Prioritize your mind and your feelings so that you can be the best version of you. You owe it to yourself.

It’s okay not to feel okay about your twenties. Life is full of highs and lows, but don’t forget to celebrate the good times. Have any other suggestions? Share them with the Post Graduate Gang in the comments or on our socials.

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Count Your Blessings,

Post Graduate

After one last spelling and grammar check, I drug my cursor over to the File tab to print my very last undergraduate college paper. Bending over emotionlessly in my desk chair, I grabbed several pages of public relations recommendations from the mouth of my printer.

My eyes had been glued to the screen for hours, but not anymore. I turned the bundle of papers right side up and not too soon after detected a glaring error. I quickly scrolled back through the paper, fixed the error, and raced over to the file tab to print, but this time was met with a resistant orange glow.

My printer had stopped working. After fumbling around for a few seconds trying to mentally sort out my printing options. I quickly got up from my chair, smoothed down my hair and headed over to the fast-casual dining hall to finish my print job. As usual, the lines were long and filled with late teens and early twenty-somethings attempting cram in one last late night meal.

Walking through the door for what I knew would be one of the last times felt like completing a secret time-traveling mission, the future and the present had caught up to each other. Very rarely do we recognize the “good ole days” as the good ole days, but when we do, its an experience that cuts deep into our perception of reality leaving an unmistakable tingling in our souls.

This is it. It’s over.

A few days later, I woke up at home to a cleansing spring breeze and an almost-Summer sunny day. My eyes opened to a different ceiling, a new horizon and a changing season.

It had ended just as quickly as it started.

Graduation day was anticlimactic but held a strong-silent power. My college was the last to graduate in the university and the smallest. There were empty chairs left over from the other graduations that happened earlier that week.

We went in, got our names called, heard a few speeches and that was that. I didn’t have a job lined up, but went through my last three months bearing a big secret. I barely told anyone.

I had gotten into graduate school, a graduate school linked to one of the best universities in the country.

Being part public relations major drew many multi-level marketing companies to my email inbox. Many times I didn’t know what was up until I went through unlikely job scenarios like group interviews or meetings at random locations.

One day, when I went back to my off-campus apartment to finish moving out the rest of my things, I got a phone call. It was from a small, family-run company on the outskirts of town.

Turns out, it was more than a phone call. It was a phone interview. I thought I did pretty good, at least better than the last one where they called hours earlier than expected, in-between classes.

A little while later, I went in for a face-to-face interview and right after Independence Day, I had a marketing job at a for-profit company which I later realized was rare in my region.

It was a fresh, fun environment with pizza Fridays, weekly happy hours, monthly birthday parties, wedding and baby showers and holiday parties. It took an hour for me to get there by bus and train, thirty minutes to get to my graduate campus back from work and thirty minutes home after a two hour, thirty minute class, but it was worth it.

It was all worth it.

Kindly,

The Post Graduate

Tag: Life After College

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