Here it is, the day you've been working for since you got your acceptance letter. You've taken (and maybe retaken) all the required classes, you've written hundreds of pages worth of research papers, and now you've completed all the necessary requirements for your degree. This is it, you graduated! OH. SHIT.
You've spent so long in the educational setting you all of a sudden are aware that you have to go into the workforce, you have to start a career. You've spent all these hours studying the elements and the building blocks of a major, and now you have to apply them in a real-world setting. If you're lucky you had an internship or two and you've gotten some experience that has given you some kind of direction, but now you're left to your own devices.
That creeping feeling of insecurity is being experienced by everyone looking commencement in the face. What if you've spent all of this time and effort, and this isn't what you want to do, or you're not really that good at it? You really liked learning about it, and it was fascinating, but what if come time for applications you're a fish out of water? What if you're not good enough to ever reach your dream job? All these what ifs are taking over your life and invading your thoughts. And it doesn't help that after congratulating you everyone's first question is "so what are you going to do with that?". Soon you're living in a cheesy 90s lunch room montage where it seems like everyone is laughing at you in slow motion. You did all this work and you have no answers?
This moment of panic is completely normal. As is applying for jobs, getting them, and realizing they aren't for you. Your first few years out of school are for gaining experience, and finding out where your strengths lie, realizing what you're truly passionate about, and making the connections you need to follow those passions. Don't let that one in a million freak accident in your graduating class who got a job offer from their internship and is now working their dream job intimidate you. And don't let the baby boomer generation make you feel bad about being a millennial. Yeah, we have peers who need a safe space from finals and parking tickets, but we are also the generation that is taking compassion and changing society for the better.
This moment of panic is typical for any kind of transitional period of your life. Just don't unpack and live in the limbo. Go forward, or go back to school. Staying in the purgatory of just working a job and not finding a meaningful career is only going to dull your sense of purpose.
Congratulations of toughing it out, on finishing school, and on graduating. You are smart, you are driven, and you have been given all the tools to be something in this world. So go be something. It's okay to wobble, it's okay to fall, just make sure you get back up every time.
