College days are probably one of the best moments of one’s life. You experience a wave of numerous circumstances and emotions; from love, friendship, hard work, failure, success, disappointment, struggle, achievement, and hope to whatever you could possibly think of. While some may struggle with college life others are cherishing it and to be honest, that’s exactly what you should be doing. These four years may be so exhilarating and emotional and you may be eager to finally live the adult life and step out into the real world, you may be full of determination to make a change or start from a clean slate, maybe you know exactly what you want and you can’t wait to achieve it; that’s absolutely great indeed but life after graduation is far from reality in actual life. If you’re a recent graduate you’d probably know the ‘true’ scenario and if you’re graduating soon then be prepared to be expecting a little different situation once you complete your undergrad.
Yes, it’s really over.
Right after graduation you’re probably going to be feeling millions of emotions coming at you all at once and that’s totally normal. It’s scary let’s face it; you are likely to be hitting the highest peak of being sentimental because this is it, welcome to the real world! Say goodbye to your friends, to your roommates, your fixed schedule, your shitty and cool professors, your weekend parties, your assignments and everything else. No more in life will you be having the same or even a similar experience to this (unless you choose to do your masters or yet another undergrad) so once you take off your gown and cap on your graduation day, it will hit you real hard knowing that its finally done and dusted for good and that feeling will cause probably weeks of nostalgia so be prepared.
Job hunting
While some may already have their future jobs ready in line for them to simply join, that may not be the case for everyone. The struggle to find a good job depends on so many factors such as: the pay, office hours, benefits, job descriptions, locations etc. It’s never easy to find the perfect job let alone your dream job. Now of course we’re not saying this is bound to happen, of course some people are lucky at settling with a great job, good for them but for those who don’t even know what they want to actually do may struggle. We also assume very easily that once we land the first job we get after undergrad our life is set; believe me that’s highly likely because at one point or the other you feel the urge to switch (again unless you are the few lucky ones).
Everything now
This is probably one of the most difficult stages one goes through after grad. See when you’ve worked so hard for 3-4 years to attain that piece of paper signifying your degree you feel like you you’ve finally made it through the tuff part but in reality the tuff part has yet to begin. After graduation you feel like the world is yours and sure it can be at nothing comes easy and everything takes a lot of time so when you are telling yourself you want that perfect apartment, that great job, a decent car and hey maybe a good partner, now that you’ve accomplished something, its setting yourself up for disappointment because yes you can have it all but not immediately. No matter what happens you can’t have it all instantly and everything will happen all at its own pace. So the sooner you realize it the better.
Loneliness
If you really think nothing is going to change between you and your sibling like friendship with your most loving and amazing friends then we hate to break the truth to you, because it all changes after graduation. Sure you and your group of best friends will stay in touch and you guys will probably see each other thrice a month but as time passes by that three visits will decrease to two then to one and before you know it a simple text message of I miss you every few months will be the case. No doubt you guys will still love each other dearly and reminisce about the college days but that’s life, it moves on way too quickly and there’s very little you can do about it.
Depression
Once you’re done with college, your life abruptly changes in a drastic way. Gone are the days you wake up at 7 am every day, you spend all-nighters doing work, you party with friends every weekend or you hit the gym at 6pm after class. Suddenly your life is schedule-less and you’re pretty clueless with what to do. To some extent you may try to create a routine for yourself but at one point it’s possible you give up on that too and feel extremely down or depressed. You may feel like your life no longer has meaning and all the effort you’ve made in those four years were worth nothing. That’s alright, think of it this way: your college life is a cliff you spent 4 years climbing and graduation is you jumping off the cliff into the great big sea and once you dive in the sea everything changes, it’ll take time for you to adjust along the heavy tides.
There’s a reason why most people advice young adults to cherish their college life, so follow it and don’t be afraid of what lies ahead but definitely be prepared for the good and bad.
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