November 23, 2003

• Topic: JUST HOW ROUGH IS THE REAL WORLD FOR COLLEGE GRADS?

  
  

  Freshman year I had an RA who looked after me, an advisor who looked after me (sort of) and parents who were all over me.  Sophomore year, junior year, senior year, there was always someone that I had to go to before making any mildly important decision.  My parents made all my flights, my classes were limited by what I was studying, or what I thought I needed to study, my meals were limited to the few campus eateries.
  Then you graduate in May, (or after 2 summer school classes) and BAM, your times up.  Suddenly, you’re either completely free, or completely trapped.  Either way, you’re screwed.  If you’re completely free, then you probably have no idea what to do next, which is pretty damn stressful.  You also have no money, which means you’re probably gonna spend some time at home with mom or dad.  And if you have a job, you’re probably not doing exactly what you want to be doing, maybe you feel like pushing a pencil through your skull.  You might still be stuck at home, or you moved, but are lonely without your college friends, and it’s not easy to start again.
  It’s a real dilemma, one that I’d say every college grad without fail has faced.  This doesn’t mean the problems are any larger than when we were in college.  We had pleanty of issues to deal with then too.  Nor is this to say this will be the end of our problems, as we will soon deal with the stress of being married, versus staying single, then eventually having kids versus not, mid-life crisis, and so on.  
  But the thing is about being 22 and fresh out of college, is how it feels like diving into a pool ice.  It’s a complete shock to your system.  As I hear more and more stories about people being unhappy w/ post-college life, I’m trying to come up with a few reasons why, and maybe see if there aren’t solutions out there.

  
  

  1) We go from living 5min. from 5 best friends, and 50 familiar faces, to being in a much lonelier situation.  For most people, living at home is a solid financial move, although it comes with the social sacrafice.  Many want to be near their family after 4 years away.  However, the reality soon surfaces that it’s hard to start from scratch in a different city than where you went to school.  And I wonder why more grads don’t look to live w/ friends from school right away.  It’s like there’s a rule out there that your lives have to separate after college.  Maybe that’s a good thing, starting from scratch, i don’t know.  But it’s worth thinking about, why so many people end up living in apartments surrounded with people they don’t know, when after 4 years of independence, we’d ideally be able to make a decision to find a common city, live like college bums a little longer, and start to build a future for ourselves.

  
  

  2) We take jobs that aren’t so good.  OK, let me elaborate.  We take jobs that don’t challenge our minds.  People simply weren’t made to do menial work, maybe some were, maybe lots were, but what I’m hearing from 100% of people who have jobs is there’s either nothing for them to do, they’re doing bitch work, they’re working all the time, their work is mindless.  I don’t really know if i believe in the stepping stone theory, that you have to put in your dues first.  There’s got to be opportunities to get meaningful and interesting experience.  And we’ve all seen the movie Office Space, you’d think we’d actually learn from that, that that’s the etpitome of all that we never hope to experience in our lives, yet we can’t untrain ourselves to walk away from doing it anyways.  I think part of the reason we take such jobs is the vision of our parents, owning a house, having the money to take care of us.  You know what, even I, the woodsman, might end up in a shirt and tie one day, making sacrafices so I can have a family.  But we’re 22, we’re young god-dammit.  OK, now i’m getting mad, wo-ah.

  
  

  I don’t mean to be totally negative.  That’s just been the feedback I’ve been getting.  People aren’t very happy with their jobs, and with living away from their college friends that’s the sentiment I’m getting, but I’ll leave it forward anyone who’s reading that to agree or disagree or whatever else you can say about that.  Maybe share a story about being in a rut, or being out of one.

  • 11:53 pm
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