THE WEEK AFTER
It’s been 10 days since I graduated Grand Valley State University with a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature. Where I thought the preceding week would feel like a triumph, it’s felt more like the fallout of a relationship. I’ve been walking around in a stupor, going through a mental checklist that no longer exists. What’s the next upcoming class? The next test? There’s nothing there—just a void of who I used to be just a fortnight ago. Being in college has defined my life for the past 18 months. And now…nothing.
I’m not longer ‘Robert Hyma-in-pursuit-of-his-BA.’
Today, I’m ‘Robert Hyma-Ok-I-have-my-BA-now-what?’
The plan was to immediately transition into a tenacious job-hunt the day after graduation, which has happened. I’ve compiled a newly printed resumé, updated LinkedIn, and have set up profiles on Indeed and ZipRecruitor (as well as GVSU’s Handshake networking system) to begin the journey to finding a career.
The problem, as some of you are spotting immediately, is that this process is coming a tad late in the game. Most of my classmates have filled their summer schedules with unpaid internships (modern day indentured servitude—but with a maybe/sorta reward of a resumé bullet point afterwards). Maybe I resisted this path because I’ve had a sorta/kinda career path before resuming college, but I assumed a degree would grant instant entry into the jobs I was not qualified for previously. I just needed a piece of university stationary that said I was now qualified for a more enticing career.
Right?
Yes and no. The path to any career is mysterious, often defined by a mixture of the type of person, the era, the culture, and valued skillset. Still, stupid is stupid, and I may have made life more tedious than it needed to be by focusing on my studies so intensely.
The real trick of college is to have one foot in and out the door: Excelling in coursework while simultaneously leveraging this achievement into the working world.
And it all sounds like a great plan until reality sets in—college students are merely human beings. I’ve often been amazed by my classmates who have worked menially paying part-time jobs, coming into young adulthood and confronting identity with new groups of people, how to date and find love (if at all), combatting a hyper-aware society forever wired into the age of the internet, prone to constant comparison, success in every aspect of life a requirement for happiness, pride, wealth, and then to somehow find the clarity of a career path that begins IMMEDIATELY after being handed a diploma placeholder at Graduation.
In other words, there’s a strange dissonance with everyone graduating college: “I’m an adult now, why am I not successful yet?”
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GRAD REBOUNDING
I’m finding it difficult to cut the cord of the past 18 months. Perhaps I’m alone, but the adrenaline of graduation has worn off and now I’m facing a new frontier with new landmarks and people with blurred faces. Everything is new, which is both exciting and terrifying, but it doesn’t discount the old. When I think about graduating college and moving on, it feels like trying to find a rebound after going through a breakup.
I had this discussion with a classmate the day before graduation took place:
ME: “Are you walking this weekend?”
HER: “No. My boyfriend did last year, and we waited two hours to hear his name. And then he walked across the stage in about four seconds. It’s a huge waste of time. I’m not walking. Are you?”
ME: “Yeah. I’ve never walked before.”
HER: “Good luck. I’m ready to be done with this place. I could care less about walking. I’m ready to move on.”
There it is: “I’m ready to move on.” She’s been emotionally done with college for a while. Most seniors in college are. Attending classes, taking exams—it’s all rote and mechanical procedure in the weeks before graduation. Why can’t life just be all the things we’ve been preparing for?
While I understand this logic, I think it’s important to attend a ceremony at the start and end of things. The Olympics has its Opening and Closing Ceremonies, marriage its wedding and divorce proceedings, and college has its convocation and graduation. There’s something necessary in attending the start and close of a journey.
Most of my classmates were packing in a hurry to get on with “living”. But what has the past four years of college been if not a significant growth spurt? In that time, most students start in their teens, age into young adulthood, experience sex and alcohol on a consistent basis, and somehow develop an independence that is (hopefully) means not returning to the way things were before arriving on campus. Why does living take place only after the journey ends when so much living has taken place the entirety of an undergraduate degree? Blame it on age, but I disagree that college is a ceaselessly tiring and punishing gauntlet that must be endured in order to “get on with life”. In the aftermath of graduation, I think the past ten days have been necessary to process what the hell has taken place.
That’s my clouded and congested conclusion at this juncture: I’ve been lost and adrift not as a reflection of my inability to cope and move on to a new era, but as a meditation about the old one.
This is what it means to move on in a healthy way.
Just, try not to eat meals with serving sizes befitting a roaming buffalo or binge watch the entirety of Netflix’s “for you” category as a way of numbing out.
It’s better to feel the listlessness in the aftermath of graduation than run from it. The point is to feel all the things you must right now.
Otherwise, it’s a rebound into something else.
Might as well have applied for internships, then.
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PARTING KNOWLEDGE
Before my final exams, I made a point to ask my professors what advice they would give their younger selves if they could. More specifically, I asked:
“What do you know now that you didn’t when you were younger?”
Here are two noteworthy responses from my professors:
First Professor:
“I once had a therapist that said, ‘It’s like you’re hauling around an extension ladder’. By that, she meant that I was looking far ahead into the future, while reaching way back into my past. If you’ve ever carried an extension ladder before, you know how awkward it is to walk around with. But that’s how it feels to think so much about the future and constantly dig through the past—there’s no pivoting without knocking into something you didn’t need to.
“So, I asked the therapist, ‘What do I do about the ladder?’ and she said, ‘Carry a smaller one.’ Since then, I understood how unimportant it was to worry about the future and the past. None of that defines you. What matters is keeping versatile in the present. That’s where everything is happening anyways. And with a smaller ladder, you can still get up and down when you need to, just with manageable heights. It’s much more useful, I’ve found.”
Second Professor:
“I once took such pride in being introverted, until I realized it was largely an excuse to protect myself. I loved to go off by myself and think, or write, or do whatever, but always at the expense of talking with anyone. As you get older, you find the reasons you do things are not practical so much as practiced. I wanted to be an introvert more than I ever was one. And ever since I gave up on the label, I’ve been much more willing to have conversations with anyone and everyone. It hasn’t left me tired and exhausted but inspired. I have so many more good people in my life because I gave up on the illusion of introversion as an identity.
“So I would say: Rethink what you cling to for identity. Often, it’s just a way of protecting yourself instead of being open to new things and people.”
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Lastly, if you haven’t checked out the recent playlist from Quarter One of this year, I highly recommend it. There’s something there for everyone. Feel free to list your most noteworthy songs of the past while in the comments below!
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Wishing everyone as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,
