What I’ve Learned Navigating Fierce Post-Grad Reality Checks

Life after college … I quickly found out exactly what life is and the only way I would like to live it.

More than half of what I’ve learned couldn’t be directly applied to enhancing my personal development.

After graduating, I had an enormous amount of time to think and even more questions. I found myself constantly reading articles and self-help books. I wanted answers on how to:

Walk the journey of self-improvement and self-awareness
Achieve happiness
Overcome the constant battle with procrastination
Manage others
Smoothly integrate myself into the workforce
Deal with appointed leaders that don’t necessarily know how to lead
Deal with high sensitivity and emotions

Needless to say, my college courses did very little to shed light on these topics. To be completely honest, I wasn’t giving them much thought during college.

Maybe it was because I was so preoccupied with studying and cramming that the only fulfillment I was concerned with was passing BIO203 (which I’ve never used to this day).

The reality of what the world really entailed hadn’t hit me yet. It wasn’t until I left my college sanctuary that I began to question and reevaluate everything.

Positive: Life occurs in phases. What we learn and experience in one phase prepares us for the next. What I learned in college served as a foundation for me to continue on my personal journey. What I didn’t learn in school, I learned immediately after.

Since then, each day is a new discovery. Deeper insights into who I am, what I like, what I love, what I disapprove of… my strengths, weaknesses, what makes me smile, blush, cry, feel empowered, drains my energy… my boundaries, my niche, my community, my heart.

No one cares about you or what you do with your life.

What is the #1 reason we hold back, opt to remain silent as opposed to speaking up, or convince ourselves that our dreams are just that .. dreams?

We’re afraid of what people may think.

The truth is that unless you’ve personally influenced someone, they aren’t spending more than 30 seconds thinking about you, or your new post on Instagram, your recent blog post, your career move, or your business idea. Life is hard and people are too busy trying to create a path for themselves.

Positive: The only green light you need is yours. We place a tremendous amount of pressure on ourselves thinking we’re under scrutiny. In the end, no one will care if you had the courage to make that next move or not, but you will.

You have to live with the decision or lack thereof.

We’re no longer on an even playing field.

For the most part, everyone in college is holding hands, walking the same ‘out in four’ journey. After graduation, you quickly see who took off running, who is still struggling to find their footing, and who are making steady baby steps. You may find yourself at a job where your coworkers range from age 23 to 50. Opportunities are no longer clearly defined nor are they distributed evenly.

Positive: As you enter the workforce, you meet people from all walks of life. People come with stories. Knowledge sharing becomes limitless.

Use this uneven playing field to your advantage by learning from everyone you come across. Though we may not all have the same starting point, we have the ability to draft our end goal.

The power is in the process. Equip yourself with the necessary tools and resources to maneuver your journey. Let go of the ego. Learn. Network.

Your next move won’t always be clearly defined for you.

In college, I fell into a routine. Class, study, test, party. I knew exactly how my days would be for the next four years. I had advisors to help plan for the upcoming semester. Teachers and friends to guide and support me along the way and a dorm room to go home to every night.

Everything was pretty much taken care of for me. As long as I was paying, cleaning, food and laundry were all easily at my disposal. There was very little deviation from the norm — for the most part, things went as planned.

Unless you’re living with your parents, the real world isn’t so clear cut. You can create a routine for yourself, plan out your next five years, build solid relationships and then one day, lose your job, your business goes south, or the promotion you worked so hard for is given to someone else.

Enter in unpaid bills, debt, judgment, low self-esteem, uncertainty, ambiguity.

Positive: Tough times don’t last forever. There’s something about uncertainty, about the unknown that keeps life interesting. After all, life is meant to be experienced, not controlled.

I had to get used to ‘feeling stuck’

There will come times when you may feel like life’s going at an unusually slow pace, you may feel stagnant or ‘in limbo’. This typically means you need to act. There’s probably some type of change that needs to take place within your life. This type of feeling might be unsettling for most especially if you consider yourself a perfectionist or highly ambitious, constantly striving to forward progression.

It’s important that you try to find peace within these transitory periods because sometimes, it’s unclear as to how long they will last.

Positive: You may consider these parts of your journey as the lows. Thankfully they are just as valuable as the highs, if not more.

This is where you really see first hand, what you are truly made of. You become a walking testament to your own resilience. When your back is against the wall, you’re forced to look internally for support and guidance.

Tapping into introspection is a great starting point and a solid foundation for any endeavor.

Life is hard and it won’t change.

Life is hard because we’re highly complex creatures. Though college courses are challenging and can become overwhelming at times, university life is far easier than real life.

Our stressors were localized to passing classes and paying tuition. The real world throws so many other factors our way. As humans, it’s in our nature to want to feel in control. In a world so mystifying, it only makes sense.

That’s why we create laws, institutions, integrated networks, and systems. All in hopes of solidifying the belief that we have an ounce of control.

We also tend to be a bit selfish, a little hypocritical, and VERY emotional. Not to mention, differing personalities, upbringings, cultures, and customs.

It’s not always easy to understand and get along with one another. Mix all this together and you’re presented with a clear picture of why life is proven to be quite difficult time and time again.

Positive: Today, you can choose to accept this and still live a happy life anyway. Life being hard is a cold, hard truth that none of us can change. The sooner we accept it, the sooner we can focus on the matters we can actually change:

Your outlook/perspective.
How you respond to situations.
Taking life and yourself a little less seriously.
No longer being a victim.
Fully embracing change and the discomfort that comes with it.

Job searching is a full-time job in and of itself.

I’ve always heard that landing your first job is pretty difficult but looking back, even that feels like an understatement.

Tips:

Larger companies can get up to 10,000 applications a day. HR will only be pulling the first 100. Even if you apply on day 7 after the initial posting, your resume likely won’t be reviewed. Try to apply to jobs at most, 3 days after the initial posting.
Create a spreadsheet to keep track of all the jobs you apply to and any trends you may be noticing.
Use LinkedIn Premium to contact HR recruiters. Possibly even important, use the LinkedIn Learning section to brush up on the skills required for the position.
Tailor your resume to align with the descriptions/responsibilities of the role. This will ensure your application passes the applicant tracking system stage.
Don’t underestimate the power of networking and building connections. It may be uncomfortable at first, but it’ll eventually feel natural and will definitely pay off.
Always send thank you emails.
Request informational interviews from people within the organization. This allows them to share their story with you and shows that you have a genuine interest in the organization.

Conclusion

In the months following college graduation, you encounter quite a few surprises. You may not have felt prepared for your new reality but if we’re being honest, it’s probably the best intro for Life 101.

Being completely thrown into the ring of fire and having to figure out your way will be the first test of many to come. The important thing to remember is that it does get better if you so choose.

Understand what life is, define it for yourself, and consciously step into that decision each day.

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This post was previously published on Medium.com

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