How to Boldly Break, Soar, and Align Six Months After College
A Postgraduate Guide in Four Acts
Prologue
Here are a few things you probably realized since your graduation:
- You can’t sustain your old spending/ eating/ thrifting habits
- You need a budget and quick how-to on financial planning
- You possess too much stuff: knickknacks, shirts, old music tickets, & trash
- You have to find the middle ground between minimalism and packratyness
- You enter into bouts of sadness randomly and at a moment’s notice
- You can be your own worst enemy, or your very best friend
- You realize the folks you expected to stay in your close circle aren’t present
- You know deep down things will never quite be the same
Act 1, Scene One
One month before graduation you have a sickly, exciting thing growing in the pit of your stomach. It’s a combination of nerves and anxiety that forms as you sit in front of your advisor counting course credits. The nerves deepen as you hunt for a trendy, yet comfortable pair of heels for commencement. The anxiety intensifies as you fill out index cards to make sure your name is pronounced properly at the moment you walk across stage in front of your thousand plus classmates and shake your Dean’s hand.
Two weeks before graduation you wonder about your classmates. About the girl you used to study Literature Humanities texts with your freshman year. About the German boy who lived down the hall from you and played varsity soccer. About the international students you loved learning from your sophomore year whose too-cool accents and bohemian styled jackets made you feel at home. About the student run e-board that made your junior survivable. About the few friends you actually spent quality time with your senior spring.
Three days before graduation you decide on your final college hairstyle. You have packed up the majority of your room, submitted your last essay, gotten rained on and deliriously happy at your senior gala, and ate your money’s worth of French toast at senior brunch. That thing in your stomach has evolved into a being with appendages named doubt, fear, and confusion which brings you damn close to an early death.
The day of graduation you’re staring your family in the face. Surprisingly, you’re outfitted in a powder blue robe, shoes on, hair brushed, makeup not quite flawless, but effective. You line up. You walk. You cheer. You sit. You stand. You collect a handshake from your dean instead of a diploma. You smile. You sit. You smile again, this time to yourself. You did it. You watch the thousand others repeat the same process. You feel drained. You feel like you didn’t know enough of them. You’re warmed when you see the ones you do know. You realize that’s just life: some people pass by, others stick, and a few endure for a lifetime. You’re positively affected by this thought. You think yourself a young scholar on the rise. You realize you are a scholar whose degree has just been conferred. You laugh. You watch speaker after speaker. You yawn. You look around and are almost floored by emotion... Good thing you’re sitting down. You stand. You clap. You throw your cap in the air.
Those four weeks leading up to your commencement and the actual day were so chocked full of emotions you think it’s going to be the millennial drama that launched a dozen seasons, that was the origin of a thousand gifs. You think you’ll be different from most other young millennials and skate past “The Post-Graduate Depression” older friends had coyly slipped into conversation. You think your time in your parent’s house, if any, will be a short stint of warmth and home cooking before you plunge into the great task of accessorizing your apartment. You thought all of that, but life proved you wrong. Oh, that devil life — getting the best of us time and time again.
Act 1, Scene Two
Almost a year ago, I got a request from a digital media startup to write a piece on what the most valued and widely sought-after job roles and career paths were for recent graduates. Though I never wrote that piece, I thought about it often. I’m still thinking about it right now. Oftentimes, we distinguish ourselves by the position we fall under in curated lists. America’s Top Graduate Schools, Best Women’s Workout Gear, Under 30 Lists, Top 100 Lists, People of the Year, Highest Performing Cars, and such and such and so and so. As we grow, the lists that we are exposed to are innumerable. Lists are practical tools, but they can be downright draining, detrimental, and depressing. My classmates have matriculated into top medical schools and law programs. They have been on the Forbes 30 under 30 lists. Additionally, they’ve achieved their summer body goals and smashed 30 days of fitness challenges. And they have signed leases to homes and paid cash down for new automobiles. Honestly, shout out to the amazing peers that I have come across whose smart work and tenacity have been beacons that light the path for those around them.
Despite this, when talking to these intelligent, fit, successful peers there’s always a moment in the conversation where they express dissatisfaction. Their listed accomplishments are outward indications of what they’ve achieved in life, but internally they are uncomfortable and at a loss for the direction they want their life to go. They are blindsided by the persistent insecurity they feel despite graduating high school with honors, excelling at the collegiate level, securing a well paying job, and living in an apartment that comes with a gym, elevator, and washer & dryer, in unit.
No list, no job, no material acquisition can validate your existence on earth.
No list, no job, no material acquisition can substitute the internal work that has to be done to be satisfied with your person.
Self-acceptance is priceless.
As one aims to streamline their life from clutter and narrow in on what matters, lists are necessary. But rather than focus on the list as a congratulatory or oppressive entity, position yourself as an active agent within its judgmental parameters. Curate your lists for you. Which graduate school will foster your sincere growth? What’s your workout plan? Can you beat yesterday’s best? What do you hope to accomplish by 30? Who’s in your Top 100? What people can you appreciate and show love towards? How can you improve your performance and always be on FWD (*Forward-wheel-drive)?
That last one may have been a touch too much, but you get my gist. I’d also like to add that the typical list by which we run our lives were made by mere men, but Your Life is shaped by You and the decisions You make as time and seasons change.
Act 1, Scene Three
Time does move and seasons do change…
To end, I would like to pose a question. It has been roughly six months since graduation, how have you spent this time? The goal of this question is not to Sideshow Bob you into feeling queasy about the past, or even give you a case of Krusty the Clown’s nervous chuckle. Oh no, don’t worry. I pose that question so that you can adequately consult your memory, request flashbacks from the hippocampus, and draw a line chart of how you have grown. In a world where change is constant, time will pass, but the only thing that matters is how you grow.
In the last six months there have been four mass shootings: a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, a newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland, a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a college bar in Thousand Oaks, California; The Supreme Court welcomed Brett Kavanagh, a seasoned lawyer flanked by sexual assault allegations; a group of teenage girls from Nigeria won a Global Tech Competition in Silicon Valley for creating a fake drug detector; Amazon’s stock reached a record high of $2039; Ethiopia welcomed its first female president, Sahle-Work Zewde; the Red Sox won the World Series; more than a 100 women were elected to Congress in the midterms with Ayana Presley of Massachusetts and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York among them; and California experienced its deadliest wildfire.
In the last six months what milestones have you mapped? What recipes have you cooked? Have you woken up earlier or gone to bed later? Have you started a new podcast or discovered an epic playlist? What accomplishments do you cherish?
Epilogue:
In those same six months, I have applied for and been redirected from countless jobs; I’ve launched a youtube channel; I’ve volunteered with a disaster relief organization and landed a job directing their marketing in Morelos, Mexico; I’ve hopped from Boston to New York to Detroit and across the Ambassador Bridge to Canada.
In those six months, I’ve felt my way through the dark. I decided that confusion wouldn’t slow me down and anxiety would not paralyze me. I made a list of who I wanted to be and I went where curiosity led.
In the last six months, I’ve realized that if we take the time to make lists that are specific to us, that are reflective of our higher-self, God moves and takes us places we could never have orchestrated ourselves.
If we take time to make lists that are more specific to us we’re more in touch with our interests and less attached to mainstream conceptions of success.
In the next installment of this Postgraduate guide, look out for BREAK: How one can achieve non-traditional success even as they begin a traditional career trajectory.
#BSA #BreakSoarAlign #BlackGraduate #PostgradStudy #Adulting
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