"What are you doing after graduation?" This has been my least favorite question in the last few months. Mostly because, I don't know. I'm not going to graduate school, I don't have a job lined up, my lease ends in July, and I'm currently working a seasonal job. I am ridiculously disappointed in myself for my plans fall through after I worked so hard to make them.
I made a plan, typed it out, was slowly but surely checking things off as I went along and then one day I couldn't check anything off anymore. Most of the things weren't under my control, not anymore at least. I had sent out the graduate applications and the job applications and after that, it's not up to me anymore. That's the worst part, is that I can't do anything to make my plan keep going the way I wanted it to. "What are you doing after graduation?" I don't know what to tell people anymore.
"What are you doing after graduation?"
"I'm going to graduate school in ________!"
"I got a job at ________________ in _____________!"
"I'm taking a year off to travel through Europe!"
The list goes on and on and having conversations with people who have solid plans after graduation is hard because they make it sound like it was so easy to make that happen. I worked my ass off to just have a possibility dangle in front of me for a split second and then be pulled away because I was just a little less than what they want.
Not getting into graduate school was a really hard thing to accept and I have become stronger because of realizing, for the first time, life isn't as easy as I hoped it would be. Then I looked to the working world and while this is an exciting idea, moving somewhere new, making great money, living on my own. What happens when you send out hundred's of applications and hear nothing.
I know what the reasoning is, I have no experience. That's not my fault though, I wasn't certified to do anything until they gave me my diploma. That took four years to get, in that four years the only thing I was qualified to do was serve food and answers phones. No experience practically means they through the application in the trash, you have to really stand out in order to have someone give you the "experience" job.
Being an adult isn't something that you can really ever be prepared for. I have gone to school every August for the last 18 years and now, I'm not going to school, I am becoming an adult. That means bills to pay, a house to buy, a job to go to, and worst of all; those social expectations I don't even want to think about as a single woman. I have had to come to terms with not knowing where my life is going anymore. As someone who grew up in a family that always had a plan, this hasn't been easy but I'm taking it day by day and making the best of what I have. Eventually I'll know what's happening again, just might take a little time.
"What are you doing after graduation?"
"I don't know but, whatever it is it's gonna be amazing!"
