The biggest postgrad problem? Stress. While we college graduates are no longer stressed about school work (unless we have plans of attending grad school), we’re now stressed about life in general. No, we don’t have a 10-page research paper due at midnight, but we must email our boss important documents that, most likely, will be lost in the spam folder for the next few days. If college didn’t prepare us for a career, it certainly taught us how to deal with stress. So, postgrads, here are the top five stressful matters you may be dealing with:
1. Where am I going to live?
We could live at home with our parents for free, sure… but do we really want to be stuck there for the next year or so? We’re adults, and we want our independence. We just spent four years away from home; we don’t want to move back in with Mom and Dad. We’ve decided that we definitely want to move out, but where do we move to? Do we stay close to home? Do we find a job first? Do we rent an apartment or buy a house? Who the f*** are we going to live with? Should we own a dog? We should find a job first, then find a place to live because 1) we need to live close to where we work, and 2) we need to have a salary that can pay for the place we live in. Should we live with one person or two people? Two people would mean three-wheeling… a lot—four people it is. See where I’m going with this? Deciding where to live is more than finding a cute place and saying, “That’s it! That’s the one!”
2. Where am I going to work?
We have degrees, but what the hell do we do with them? Some of us are going to grad school. Some are continuing work with a previous internship. Some are settling for low paying jobs in retail because adult jobs are intimidating. Do we want to work in the city? Do we want to work behind a desk? Do we want to work around other people? What if we get a job offer and don’t like the people that work there? Do we apply to more than one job? Do we apply to a job that requires five or more years of experience when we only have two years of experience? Do we apply for jobs where we’re going to live? (Refer to #1—this is an endless cycle.)
3. Speaking of job experience… Where do we get it?
Dear Future Employers, how do you expect we graduates to have experience fresh out of college? Better yet, how are we supposed to gain experience if you won’t hire us and let us actually gain it? Sincerely, Every College Graduate Everywhere. Seriously. Nothing is more frustrating than reading through a job description and deciding to apply, then seeing that seven years or more of experience with yada ya is required. (Which, let me tell you, is practically impossible for entry level jobs.) C’mon, employers—at least make it possible for us to use our degrees.
4. How do I maintain relationships with friends?
Chances are, all our friends went their separate ways after graduation. Unfortunately, we couldn’t go with all of them. Sure, we keep in contact via texting and social media, but will it eventually fizzle out? Will we be replaced with better friends? Will our friends miss us as much as we miss them? What are we going to do on Friday nights? We’re not friends with the friends we had in high school anymore, so we can’t hang out with them. Do we have to travel to see our friends? We don’t have money to travel. Money. We don’t have money to do anything.
5. How can I afford to be an adult?
Thanks to Mom and Dad, we now must pay our own phone bill and car insurance and rent. On top of that, we must buy groceries and decorations for our home. We should save money, too—we still want that cruise to Mexico three years from now. How do we know if our job is paying us enough money? How do we talk our employer into paying us more? How do we balance being “responsible” and still manage to have fun on the side? Can we afford to go to the bar Saturday night? Can we afford to eat dinner every night? Can we afford to breathe?
The stress that came along with papers and assignments has now been replaced with the stress of everything else in life. We’re real adults now… in the real world looking for a real home and a real job. It’s happening, graduates. Welcome to the real world (the one our parents warned us about from day one).
