Life After College… Update!

So to anyone who has been following along on my little journey you would have read a post from a couple of months ago about graduating college. So a few months have passed and while I haven’t found the secret to life and how to graduate and make sure everything falls in place… I have learned a couple of things!

Everything will happen at its own timing and pace:

I feel like in every movie that we watch or kind of what society expects for us is to graduate college and within the year fall into a wonderful 9-5 that pays a high salary and pension. Honey OH HONEY this is not the case. I graduated college and was employed for a couple of months, jobs in my field would not hire me because I needed more experience than I had and jobs that weren’t in my field I had no experience for. It felt like a lose-lose situation for me and the post-graduation depression started to hit. I felt like nothing was happening right, how did nothing go according to plan? Where were my lavish internship and my blog that would make me famous! Where was the job at Cosmo that I so badly wanted? I felt like I had so little time to take over the world and have my life all figured out. I was WRONG! I stopped trying to figure out my life before the start of fall and decided to take things one step at a time. Several months later I have two jobs, none of which are in my field but I have enough money to start saving and paying off student loans. I have enough to put aside to build towards my first apartment and while my goals are not being done in the order of which I wanted them to happen am I not still achieving it? I was so focused on having the job of my life I missed out on so many amazing opportunities because I was stuck in the mindset that my life would all come together 2-3 months after graduating college.

The real adulting begins:

Okay! I know we’ve all heard this before at some point in our lives and you’re like * rolls eyes* I’m in college, no parental supervision, I buy my own beer I’m totally an adult. College is adulting. LOL Wrong Again! In college, you were probably paying a couple of bills here and there and you had school to stress but that was just training for what life is like in the real world. Let’s imagine it together: you’ve graduated, everyone’s celebrating you and telling you how proud they are of you and your life is at its peak. Suddenly you’re making your own doctors appointments, half of your check is going straight to bills, rent is due on the first and it comes sooo soon each month and come December Sallie Mae is knocking on your door because she wants her money back. You also have to buy and cook your own food, you can’t be a shut-in your friends will want to hang out and at some point sleep will seem like an option, not a necessity. It’s like the midterms of adulthood. When things become overwhelming, take a break to call your mom, she’ll have all the answers you need or at least be a shoulder to cry on.

Be Yourself, Find Yourself, and Love Yourself:

You’ve spent the past couple of years “learning” about yourself and trying new experiences and just living your best life the college way. Similar to graduating high school, graduating college is an eye-opening and life-changing experience. You are entering a new stage in your life, a stage where your life isn’t centered around school, you no longer have to get up at the crack of dawn and listen to someone lecture you for hours. You’re in control of what you do with your life, for real this time. Be an Entrepreneur, work a 9-5,  work nights, or just don’t work at all. It is officially your time to do what you’re doing for yourself.

I may not have the secrets to life after college, I am just wandering around confused on how this adulting thing works but I can offer my experiences and lessons. Isn’t that what adulting is? learning from mistakes, even the ones you don’t make.

Happy November allow the rest of the year to be good to you in preparation for a new start.