Life After Graduation

spoiler alert: It gets messy.

I think its safe to say that I have spent a majority of my life living on autopilot, as most people my age have. Until now my life, for the most part, has been mapped out and all I’ve had to do is show up and follow the metaphorical yellow brick road that has been my day-to-day existence. From being born, to learning how to walk, talk, do long division (a skill that did not stick for long). To cooking, driving and everything in between. In the moments that they occur, these milestones do seem like grand achievements and are celebrated as such. However, in hindsight these were all just inevitable steps that I would take as so many others before me have and many others after me will too. Not all, but many. We go through the first 18 plus years of our lives with every decision typically made for us. Apart from those few times when we've had to say no to drugs and alcohol on our own. And even if it wasn’t a decision that was being made, I knew what the next step was. That after primary comes high school and then university. And even if I didn’t know exactly what it was that I wanted to study at first, I knew that that would be the next step. That I would slave over a dozen plus essays and that my bloodstream would be made up of 40% caffeine for three years. And that I would then go on to experience one of the best 20 seconds of my life, when they call my name and I get to walk across the stage and collect my degree. Another grand achievement that was celebrated as such. But even after having lived through possibly the happiest day of my life (that being my graduation) looking back, I can’t help but sometimes feel like that too was just one of many inevitable steps that I would take as so many others before me have and many others after me will too. Not all, but many.

Now I don’t mean to sound absolutely grim or downplay my achievement in anyway. My graduation is not even what this piece of writing is about but more so what happened after that day. Or more like what didn’t happen.

Have you ever watched a fairy-tale? Of course you have, who hasn’t. In most fairy tales, whether we have seen that particular one or not we can deduce more or less how it will go. The protagonist will face some kind of adversity that will, in the end help them find their purpose or help them see what the true meaning of life (or love) is. Maybe it’s an evil stepmother, a misunderstood Beast, an angry island or a deceitful wolf. Some kind of lesson is learned by the end of the movie and then cue the happily ever after. But what happens after they fight off said evil stepmother or escape the wolf or get the prince and the curtains close? Do they really live happily ever after? Without a hitch, speed bump or bad day? Is that really how the story ends? You see, I ask because prior to my graduation I never really put much thought into what happens after I got off the stage. I mean yes, I knew that I would eventually have to find a job and actually put my degree to use. Move out, buy a car, become independent etc. I knew that I would have to do all the adult stuff that I’ve seen everyone else do. But I guess a part of me expected it to be as mapped out as every other part of my life had been until that point. That I would just continue to move through life as seamlessly as I had before. But boy was I wrong.

Life after graduation has been a weekly serving of continued “We regret to inform you…” emails, with a side of existential dread. Again, my intention is not to sound absolutely grim and awfully pessimistic, but it does become hard to remain positive when life is at a standstill. And while there are many days when kind words from friends and family provide me with comfort and remind me that I’m not alone in feeling the way I do. There are still those one or two (or five) days in the week where powering through is not as easy. Especially when our peers, who we were once on autopilot with, seemingly shift so gracefully to manual without a hitch (extreme emphasis on seemingly).

I recently saw a quote that read “Stop being hard on yourself for creating a timeline as a child when you had no idea what living like an adult was”. And it got me thinking of all the plans that were made during that ‘Autopilot’ season of my life and how we (read I) spend so much of our time looking to the future. How we map out our ideal lives in our heads and in a way create disappointment without even realizing it. I mean do not get me wrong, the future is exiting and its only human nature for us to think of what may come ‘next’ but perhaps it is in fixating over the unknown that we disallow ourselves from enjoying the now. And when that fixation does not come to pass in the way we would have wanted, it sometimes makes us feel like failures.

Perhaps life after graduation has become dreadful because for the first time, I have to figure out how to navigate myself as opposed to relying on the mapped-out version of my life. And perhaaapsss that is exactly what I (read we) need and exactly where I need to be to finally start living.