Starting Life After College
Graduating college is an exciting time but can also be a scary transition. While you might be glad to be done with exams, not have to share a bathroom with a dorm of people, and be done with dining hall food, you might also worry about how to build the life you want now that you’re done with college, and perhaps what that life even looks like. You might be moving back in with your family and might struggle with a difficult relationship with them, or just with how your relationship with them has changed since you were in high school. Or you might be moving into an apartment and struggling with new responsibilities. And regardless of where you are living, you might be struggling to adjust to your new job or grad school, or with trying to decide which of those to pursue.
“ ...it’s really important to be patient with yourself during this time [...] you will likely need some time and space to find your way through all of the changes that are happening.”
As freeing as it can be to have graduated college, there are a lot of things that you may not have needed to think about before, because they were provided for you in one way or another. For example, you might not have needed to budget money and spend time planning and cooking meals, because you could just walk over to the dining hall when you were feeling hungry. You may not have needed to find a place to live because there was a dorm room reserved for you. Things might have been mostly in walking distance or accessible by a campus shuttle, so you might not have needed to worry about having a car. Social life often also comes more naturally in college because you are surrounded by people in a similar life stage and there are generally lots of social events where you can get to know each other. All of these parts of life may change after graduation.
I bring up these differences between college and post-college life to illustrate that it’s really important to be patient with yourself during this time. Graduating is a big accomplishment and is very exciting, but you will likely need some time and space to find your way through all of the changes that are happening. One thing that can sometimes be helpful is to think about your short-term (next few months to a year) and long-term (5-10 years from now) goals for different parts of your life, and how you can set up a life that allows you to work towards those goals:
A somewhat obvious area of life to consider is work/school. This can be a stressful one, and likely one that you’ve already thought quite a bit about. Think about where you want to be several years from now, and think about what it takes to get there, working backwards to today. What can you do in the near future to get you closer to your long-term goals? Or, maybe you’re not sure what you want to do or are taking a break from pursuing your ultimate career path. What matters in a job right now? Is pay most important to you? Do you want to have a certain type of experience or work in a particular industry? Think about what might make you most satisfied now, whether that satisfaction comes from working toward a long-term goal or meeting your present needs.
Another area of life to consider is your living situation. You might have the goal of eventually buying a house someday, though this may feel very far away right now. For this category it might be most helpful to think about your living situation now and over the next few years. What are the pros and cons for you of living with family, living alone, living with roommates, or some other living arrangement? These vary by situation, and like all of the other categories, also vary by the position in which you currently find yourself. Some people need to rely on more support from their families, while some are unable to rely on it at all, and everything in between. There is no right or wrong when it comes to this. Think about what is right for you right now. It is likely that you will be able to change this as you get further from graduation.
What do you want your social life to look like, and how might you achieve that? This might look different depending on where you are living. If you are living where you attended college or high school, maybe there are opportunities to connect with people you met there. Or maybe you want to meet friends through work. Finding events on Facebook or through meetup.com or even your local library (they have a lot of events that have essentially nothing to do with books) can be helpful ways to meet new people. Some people also enjoy friend-making apps, such as Bumble, which are similar to dating apps but are used for the purpose of making friends.
A related area is free time. You may have more of this than you did in college, or it might look a little different. What kinds of things might you enjoy when you are not working or spending time with others? Are there hobbies you want to explore, or things that you used to have time for but hadn’t done much of in college? Now might be a time to become involved in these things.
Starting your own life after college can be difficult and can occur on a lot of different timelines. No timeline is right or wrong; there is only what is best and worst for you. It’s okay and expected to struggle in different areas right after graduation, and to maybe do well in others. You might find yourself feeling both glad to be done with college and also missing some parts of the experience. When that happens, it can be helpful to think about what you are looking forward to in the life you are creating for yourself. Or even to look back on parts of college that you did not like and are glad to now be away from. I, for example, find it more difficult to miss college when I think about sharing a bathroom with an entire hallway full of students, trekking through the ice and snow in 10 degree weather just to get dinner, or not being able to have pets. Find what resonates for you, and remind yourself of those things when it is helpful.
