After College
Finished with your degree? Good. Completed internships and cooperative education? Great! Now what? The crazy thing about school is that it prepares you academically and theoretically. You have information under belt and you know how to communicate intelligently, and the college even helped you with your internship. The real world includes school, but the world of jobs and a burgeoning career still looms over your head, you wonder if you may even survive this elusive economy.
No matter what your degree is in, it has given you a couple of things to survive. Namely, it helped to develop your critical thinking and reading skills. What places need this skill? Well, many jobs such as computer tech jobs, editing, advertising, even jobs in managerial positions would love to have someone who can read and think critically about information. If you’ve taken the right business and communication courses, you’ll even know how to respond to crisis situations and how to deal with pressure (psychology classes come in handy for that).
There’s more to the real world than jobs though. What qualities do you have that will keep you strong in hard times? What resources and networking helps do you have to survive in the ever changing cultural and socio-economical context? Education is fine, but after school you learn a new term: self reliance.
Moving on into the real world can be daunting for some. Many of us have taken economics, government, and have read witty quotes by Mark Twain; only to find out that you no longer wish to stay with your parents and you long for ownership of something. You have to make a living for yourself. Find new friends. Begin to become more of yourself and eventually have a family or if not, find something to devote your energies to. This means soul searching will be next on your list.
Life will deal out plenty of complexities for you and you will mess up in some areas, but the beauty of it all is that as long as you’re alive, life can be your next college. Learn from it. Pain may be involved, some naysayers will try and cramp your style; you may have earned a degree in one area and find that you have a passion somewhere else. You may have majored in biology, but dancing and art is your dream. Go for it.
Throughout this walk after college you’ll come across many paths that fork and divide and oftentimes there are at least ten paths you can take! Decide to be open to those paths and learn from it.
