"What are you doing next year?"

"Is there really much money in that?"

"Did you really have spend four years of tuition to do that?"

As the summer winds down, students all over are packing up their beach supplies and getting ready for the fated return to academia. Students will reunite, telling the tales of their summer adventures, be it a worldy excursion or that terrifying summer internship. However, for those who are coming back for their senior year of college, the excitement will soon wane, to be replaced with a question that will haunt the mind without end: what am I doing after college? With this question comes the anxiety-driven self-evaluation we put ourselves through. What have I done with my four years that's going to show the way? I have all these classes and clubs and internships under my belt, but will it get me that perfect job?

Chances are, it won't. At least, not at first.

As our newest generation of millennials enter the workforce, we are seeing a vastly different landscape than that of our parent's generations. A couple decades ago, college attendance was much smaller. The Bachelors degree was not the standard of post-high-school education, and often many people earned Associate degrees or studied at technical institutions. The job you wanted to do was almost always there; all you had to do was open the door, and the rest would follow.

Now we are seeing something different. As more and more people earn Bachelors degrees as undergrads, jobs become harder and harder to attain. You can have hundreds of people, all of different majors and backgrounds, vying for one position, and what used to be the ideal job has slowly become just that: an ideal, something we want in our minds but can't attain in real life.

With this trend, our newly-graduated professionals flood the job market and find a variety of positions in sales, consulting, public relations, administration, and so on. All of those jobs that are behind the scenes of what we really want to do become our only option. And we can begin to think we've settled, that we are trapped in the monotony of this work just on the fringes of our dreams. We think we will be stuck here. Thus, we hear more and more about people opting out of these jobs who are waiting, waiting for the ideal to become a reality.

This can't be the way we go forward. The workplace is changing, the job market adapting to how education and industry are growing in the 21st century. Studies show that the average post-graduate worker will hold at least four jobs before they turn 30. We are experimenting, dipping our toes in all these industries, meeting people and networking our way up the professional ladder. And with luck, sooner rather than later, that door finally opens to what you always dreamed of doing. It just took a few years to get there.

So, a piece of advice to my fellow seniors on the brink of jumping into the world: don't let the search for the ideal job stop you in your tracks. The world we live in now demands our flexibility, challenging us to step out of our comfort zones and try a variety of experiences. Your first job is not going to be your last, and the people you meet on your way will shape what you can do. So press on, and I'm sure that in just a few years, we will all be where we want to be.