David Reitan suggests that not finding a job right out of college might not be the worst thing for a grad.
________
Since graduating one year ago, things have not gone as planned. I have not landed my first “real job,” I am still living at home, and I have a long way to go on paying my student loan debt. On paper, it could appear that I don’t have much going for me. If the ultimate goal of completing college is to land your first real gig and thus move out on your own, then I have missed that mark by miles. In many ways, I have failed. Yet, should I really be considered a failure? And if the true, happy graduate experience is to have all of what I mentioned accomplished, am I somehow delusional if I am generally happy with my current situation?
There is a sincere hope — an expectation even — that graduates will be prepared to follow their dreams and achieve their goals wherever they go. They will be equipped to handle the stresses of graduate school, the anxieties of starting a career, and be able to weed through all the advice they will be receiving as they start their lives. I know from experience that people graduating college are concerned with the change that is happening, and want to do their level best to make sure everything goes as they want it to.
Yet, very often things do not go the way we had planned, and not through lack of trying or simply giving up. Things just don’t always work out. I graduated with people who prided themselves on knowing exactly what they were going to do and had worked tirelessly to get to that point. Now, those same people, who remain just as talented and driven, are finding out what they had prepared for wasn’t what they had hoped it to be. Or, they are realizing their initial strategies didn’t work and now have to rethink their approach, start anew.
We’ve all heard of plans falling through, be it our own or someone else’s. Yet what we often forget is that this is O.K. It is O.K. to fail. It is O.K. to fall short.
Our culture has placed so much emphasis on succeeding that the stories of defeat that accompany every triumph are usually forgotten or flat out ignored.
|
The attitudes surrounding college graduation can make post-grad life seem like a total imperative. Anything less than our original goal or first job or top grad school is absolute failure and cause for deep concern and pity. Our culture has placed so much emphasis on succeeding that the stories of defeat that accompany every triumph are usually forgotten or flat out ignored.
With this in mind, it is easy to understand why failure can be married to feelings of negativity. However, we need to remember that we are capable of choosing the meaning of our experiences for ourselves. I started out by saying that I am not in a very ideal situation. While I have faith that my efforts will lead me to better times, the fact is that I am guaranteed to have more bad ones in the future. It’s just how things are, for all of us. Still, it is important that I choose how I approach these instances and learn how to look for the positive. Learning to actively seek out the positive in our situations should not be viewed as “giving up.” Rather, this is a life skill.
♦◊♦
It is acknowledging that there is a process to everything and these processes take time. What’s more, real, positive experiences occur even during bad times, even when we think them to be impossible. Remembering this can take a herculean effort when we are living with failure.
Yet, it is in exactly these points of our lives where the act of choosing to find meaning is the most crucial. Had I not moved home after graduation, I would not have been able to help my family like I have if I had been living elsewhere. Thus, I have been able to grow closer to those whom I have not been with over the last four to five years. Had I not moved home I would not have gotten to work with some incredibly talented people, people who have helped me to realize that there is always more to explore, even in places you thought all options were exhausted.
Had I not moved home I would not have found that success and happiness come in a myriad of ways, and that no matter what we achieve or don’t, we do so with our own definitions and meaning.
Photo by Chris Bentley/flickr