Lost After Graduation

I graduated college in May of 2017. As I congregated with my newly college graduate “friends” an hour before the ceremony, I felt a worriedness overcome me. My professor came over to our group to congratulate us and I admitted to him I felt uneasy. I told him I did not feel ready to graduate college and I feel a need to accomplish more.

My professor leaned in and whispered to me, “I felt the same way and that feeling has never gone away.” Looking back upon this dilemma I was facing, I realize that I did not know what I wanted to do after college.

During my four years of college, I had no plan for what I was going to do after I graduated. I assumed I was going to figure out my career path during college. I did not do any internships and worked odd jobs to pay for my college expenses. If you’re in college and graduate with no career path this is most likely your path.

A month before your college graduation you’re going to be asked by family members, professors, and friends, “What do you plan on doing after college?” In your response you will mention a couple of careers you’re interested in, yet you will have little to no knowledge of the careers you have mentioned. Or your response will be sarcastic, “I’ll retire” or “I want to be like Seth Rogen’s character from Knocked Up, before he met Katherine Hiegl’s character.”

At your college graduation party, people will congratulate you and give you money as a graduation gift. You will realize the money your receiving should have been received during college to pay for your college expenses, but you will spend the money on bullshit.

A few weeks after graduating from college you will be either unemployed or working at a minimum wage job. Either way you will tell people, “It’s only temporary I will have a job lined up.” After the honeymoon phase of graduating from college you will realize you have no goals in your life to accomplish.

Graduating from college was only your life goal and after finishing that goal you realize you need to find the next hobby or project you will work on. You will start working out and realize you need to exercise your brain. You will start reading books recommended by your family, friends, and Amazon in hopes of maintaining your mind as it was in college.

After a couple of months, you realize you need to start applying for jobs and your resume is awful. You will go on resume builder websites and learn how to create the “perfect” resume to obtain a job. You will work on perfecting your resume for an hour and after you finish your resume you will show it to your friends to give you some advice. They’re advice is your resume is shit and you need to start over. You will fix your resume multiple times and realize this is the best your resume will be.

You will apply for jobs on Indeed and realize you’re not qualified for any of the positions you applied for and hope an employee says, “Fuck it. His resume seems interesting” and request an interview with you. After awhile of no responses from employers you start to realize your resume has no actual work experience, only bullshit jobs. You will apply for internships, but already graduating from college makes you unqualified.

A family friend will reach out to you for a job opportunity. You’re hesitant, but your family friend assures you he has the connections to get you the job. That will be the last time you will speak to your family friend and you will try to email and call him, but with no response.

Little more than a year after graduating from college your family is worried for you not obtaining a job. You will downplay their worries and tell them, “I’m waiting for the right opportunity” or “I’m still waiting to hear back from a couple of jobs”. Your family will give you advice on job hunting and the next day you will not remember what your family told you.

Late at night your anxiety will overcome you and you will start applying for any position. You will do this on a weekly basis. A company will reach out to you for an interview. On the day of your interview, you will wake up early and prepare yourself. During the interview you will realize you’re not qualified for the job and feel embarrassed by your lack of coherent answers given to the interviewer.

You will run into people you know from growing up and they will ask you how is your career going. You will explain how difficult it is to find a job, and they’re response, “Just keep applying.” You act like you appreciate they’re response, but you have been applying for jobs. You have applied to over hundred jobs and still no one wants to hire you.

You will go on a date and try to avoid the conversation of work. Eventually your date will ask you, “What do you do for a living?” You will tell your date what you want to do (by this point you actually have an idea for your career) and your date seems interested what you said. Your date asks, “What are you doing now?” You will explain the rut you’re in, but you will find the opportunity to change the conversation.

After a few dates and you quickly realize that dating is not cheap and you will use this as motivation to find a job. You will go to a temp agency and hope you can have a job lined up right away so you could impress your date. Your relationship ends and you will blame your lack of a career as the reason your relationship ended.

After a little more than two years, you decide to make a dramatic change. You will create a LinkedIn account. A friend of yours convinces you to create a LinkedIn account and explains the in-and-outs of LinkedIn. After reading numerous articles on how to attract job recruiters to your LinkedIn account, you apply their tips. You feel confident for the first time, since graduation you will actually have a job lined up.

You will move out of your parents’ home to motivate yourself to start your career. You will move to Los Angeles thinking that living in Los Angeles increases your chances of starting your career. After a couple of months, you’re overwhelmed by the financial burden of living on your own and question if moving out was a good idea.

Then one day a recruiter from the temp agency who you have not talked to in a few months reaches out to you for a job opportunity. It’s a few blocks from where you live and the job requires you to start the next day. You immediately say yes and fill out the paperwork needed to start working.

A few hours later your recruiter will inform you, your job position was withdrawn. She explains why the job was withdrawn, but you do not care to hear an explanation. You’re not shocked this has happened to you. At this point your numb by the disappoint of job hunting.

You’re unsure of your future at this point. You think of a few skills you can learn to increase your chances of being hired, but without the work experience you doubt a job will hire you. You check on your LinkedIn account and your email occasionally. You slowly stop applying for jobs, because the time applying for jobs takes away from your passion projects or hobbies. Last resort you realize the only way for you to obtain a job is to wait for it to appear out of nowhere.

On one of those rare occasions of checking LinkedIn, you will see red under messages, meaning someone has sent you a message. You click on messages and see a job recruiter has reached out to you for a job. Seems too good to be true and you ignore the message. A few days later you will reply to the job recruiter to see if the opportunity is legitimate.

Eventually within an hour you will talk to this job recruiter on the phone and this job recruiter will arrange a job interview. You’re unsure of what the position entails, but you realize you have no other options.

The job interview will be your typical job interview that you have had in the past. You talk about your college experience, why you’re qualified for the position, and the few skills you have. The interview ends and you doubt you will be hired.

You assume the other candidates are more qualified than you and you anticipate to receive an email stating, “We appreciate your interest and enthusiasm to work for our company, but we have decided to move on with other qualified candidates.” You have received this email from every job interview you have had.

A week after your job interview, the job recruiter calls to inform you that the company wants to hire you. You make yourself sound excited to impress the job recruiter, because you assume the job position will still go to another candidate. After filling out the necessary paperwork, you’re told to show up on Monday for your first day.

The night before your first day of work you cannot sleep. You try to imagine what your first day on the job will be, but you only think about the endless possibilities of how difficult this job may be for you and wonder if this is the career you want. You calm yourself down by thinking about not having to apply for jobs anymore and not feeling embarrassed to answer questions regarding your work.

At your first day you’re overwhelmed by the environment you’re in. This your first time working in an office and the chair your sitting in is uncomfortable. You try to remember all of your coworker’s names and read your training binder multiple times.

You try to avoid cringing your coworkers, but you do anyway. Your coworkers assure you they have made worst mistakes and share their horror stories working on the job. Initially your first few weeks of starting your job is rough, but eventually you understand the tasks of your job position and develop the skills to succeed.

After work, driving back home you think about your current job. You appreciate your wage and having weekends off, but this career is not your passion. You remember what you told your past relationship what you wanted to do in your career and your restlessness to accomplice more you decide to put the effort into developing your dream job.

You read numerous articles on your dream job and reach out to friends and LinkedIn connections who may help you obtain your dream job. You’re currently in the process of developing your dream career…