We've been led astray, guys. We've been hoodwinked from day one. We started what we thought was the rest of our lives in a dorm on a college campus, then all of a sudden they shoved a diploma in our hands, patted our shoulder and said, "Good luck getting a job with your bachelor's degree."
Our yearbooks always had the same thing written in them, "I know you'll be great in whatever you do" and, while it's nice and something we like to hear, what exactly are we doing?
It's an unspoken, yet linear path--an alignment of all our school work, our extracurricular activities, our finals. It's supposed to be graduate college and get a job. But more and more of us are packing up our college apartments, looking around the empty rooms and asking, "What's next?"
Around 98 percent of us most likely have no clue. It was easier for our parents and a lot easier for our grandparents but it's our turn up to bat and I for one am too afraid to swing — I'd rather not get hit by the ball.
To paint a picture of how painful it was for me to move out of my college town — I cried at least six times the day before. The last time I cried that much I'd broken up with my ex-boyfriend. When I told my mom, she said something that made so much sense: "Honey, you're going through a grieving process, this is a part of your life that you're losing." While not a major tragedy, she's right. That's exactly what all of us are going through right now.
Some of our friends are lucky enough to be offered jobs right away, some are moving directly into their own place. And some of us have to move back in with our parents, and back to sharing one car and back to losing all of our privacy.
It sucks. It really, really sucks. But here's something our parents have literally been trying to tell us; something we as millennials pride ourselves on ignoring--life isn't easy. Things will not fall into our laps because it's "fair" and we think it should. There is no plan unless you make one.
Our lives aren't over, we're just beginning on a bigger, scarier and more exciting adventure than ever. We just have to work for it.
