Dear Postgrad,
I know the difficulties that surround your life. The elusive future is always set before you, and the goals and ambitions you once held so dear are constantly shifting to adjust for the realities of your circumstance. It is a difficult position to be in; youthful naiveté collides full on with bitter reality, and the resultant outcome is an unmotivated, undetermined, uninspired version of you. It’s hard to be gung-ho when the cloudiness of what’s in front of you obscures your destination.
So you drift haphazardly along, feeling the weight of pressure constantly mounting on your shoulders. There are nights that you sit at home, and think for endless hours about your situation. Not many of us are exempt from this. Whether you are working or not, the thoughts are still there. Plaguing. Questioning. Is this what I thought my life would be? Can I really see myself doing this for the rest of my life? What do I want to do? Why am I here? How can I gain significance in a hostile and competitive world?
You’ve never felt so little, so unimportant. You feel the tinge of depression; college was so much more exciting. You had freedom in college. You had a “defined” goal, in college. As a matter of fact, your entire life, up until this point, has always been defined. Get through Elementary. Get through Junior High School. Get through High School with a 4.0 GPA, great SAT scores, and 20 completed AP tests. Graduate college, and then…
The question is left unanswered. There is nothing definite, anymore. Grad school? Work? Teach? Play? You have to make your own decisions, now. There’s no one there to walk you hand in hand, anymore. And that void is tough to fill, to negotiate. It used to be as easy as making an appointment with the school counselor. Now, for a little direction, you have to take the initiative and seek out your own counsel.
To you I say one thing: keep on walking, there is significance ahead. Don’t lose sight of your hopes and dreams; tomorrow is another day. If you trudge along, and keep your head up, there will be moments in your life where things begin to come together. There will be days when the “lightbulb” clicks, and things begin to make sense. During those times, the journey of life begins to work out in your favor, and all the tangles and knots begin to unravel themselves.
Friends come into your life, and speak truth. You pray; an exercise, that perhaps you haven’t practiced since high school, when your parents forced you to go to church (or your friends convinced you that you should attend their high school retreat). But this time, the prayer doesn’t go unanswered. This time, there’s a response. A glimmer of hope.
And slowly but surely, you climb out of the uncertainty. One step at a time, you get through the loneliness, the fear of failure, the (insert difficulty here). Your life begins to have purpose again.
Keep on walking. Keep on moving. Don’t lose faith, don’t let jadedness or bitterness consume you. There’s hope, there’s joy, there’s happiness to be found in spite of it all. And if all else fails? Buy a motorcycle.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
buy a motorcycle? HAHAHA.
ah! this is a fantastic website! and thanks for the article! lol im just starting my post grad life (2 weeks into it) and this is the most helpful website and article that i have come across. epic win!
This is great! I’ve been looking for something like this. It’s true; I keep asking myself, “Why did no one write anything about what happens after college graduation, but they wrote about everything else, even the most miniscule thing…?”
Thank you for all the awesome posts (not just this one). It’s a real bright spot in a cloudy day.
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