As a college student in my senior year, one of the scariest things to think about wasn’t that midterm I should have prepared more for or thinking about that one terrible night out, but what life after college graduation would look like. The majority of my friends didn’t even want to think or even talk about it. While a handful of people had full time jobs lined up from previous internships, so many people I knew had zero clue what they’d be doing. Or, they generally felt like they had no clue when they considered life without their friends nearby.
Senior year is the most incredible, fun year of your life, then BAM, it’s over in a flash. It’s like you wake up and life as you know it is gone. Honestly, it felt like starting freshman year again, but there’s no school or community to join. It’s just you. Just empty calendars for decades ahead, waiting for you to fill. Like any fresh start, it’s scary. And a massive adjustment. But most of all, the anxiety of the unknown feels overwhelming. Fortunately, you start to figure things out and life gets better. Which is inevitable! You will figure it out, but that doesn’t always make the worrying go away.
If this sounds like you, know that life after college might be hard at first, but does get better. Based on how you plan and how unafraid you are of failure and new things, you could make life possibly better than college. These are the things I wish I could tell ‘College Me’ about what life after college is like.
Moving Out vs Living at Home + the Overall Trend I Saw
The main theme of this period of your life is that comparison is the thief of joy.
One of the first big decisions to make for life after college graduation is where you will live. For me, and maybe you, this one wasn’t too difficult. Since I didn’t have a new big girl, full time job, I would be living at home. This was a common decision for more than half of the people I knew from home or graduated with. A handful of people got into grad school, so they were moving or commuting there.
The business and engineering majors in my life typically had full time jobs offered to them months before graduating. They’re now probably working 80 hours a week in finance, consulting, accounting, etc, but that’s not what you see online. You see the new city they were able to move to, the cool restaurants or trips they’re able to afford. If that’s not you, you scroll past these pictures online, wondering why you were stupid enough to study what you studied, why you didn’t work harder, why they are having a blast but you aren’t.
Obviously, there are other people who aren’t business or engineering majors who achieve this ‘perfect 20s life’ very soon after graduating, but they certainly make up the majority. But, you have to remember that while they take up lots of rent in your mind, they are a small minority of your year’s graduating class. You cannot let what you want to achieve make you resent where you are now! It’s part of the journey, which if you don’t enjoy now, you won’t enjoy the destination as much as you deserve to.
What I did
As I mentioned, I lived at home after graduating. In fact, as I write this, I still live at home. And I probably will for at least the next year. My situation is different, but so is everyone’s. I applied to a program to teach English abroad for the year after I graduated and I LOVED it. It felt like I got the freedom and responsibility of moving to a new city like the business and engineering kids did, which I did, but also in a new country. I got to travel and be even more of an adult than I will have to be in the US until I have kids.
If you aren’t one of the people who will have a job immediately after graduation, consider ways to do some traveling while you don’t have too many commitments! I have posts like this one with tons of ways to do so, and this post introduces the program I did.
Living at home
Now that I’m back, I found my full time job. I studied Human Development and Family Studies, which I initially planned to do something medical with. With help from my summer job at a country club, I work as an Office Manager for a hedge fund. As I live at home with the biggest income I’ve ever had, I love where I live! Unfortunately, we live in a world getting more and more and more expensive as the days go. They say the majority of people won’t be able to afford houses, which scares me a bit. Living at home is something that truly gives me peace, as I can save and invest tons of money to set myself up financially, the best way I possibly can.
For me, living at home means more trips I can save to go on (hopefully going to both Mexico and Peru next year)! Living at home means I can pay off my student loans in a fraction of the time. Also living at home means I don’t have to cook every night or pay for all the groceries.
Making the decision
While living at home is certainly not perfect, like being farther from your friends or maybe you don’t get along with your parents or you don’t get the same amount of freedom that you want, I think, for me and the majority of people, that if living at home is an option for you after graduation, that you should! Nothing will be more humbling, but push you more towards your goals.
If you think moving out asap and living with a tight budget will push you and help you grow more, then do that. Do what you think feels right to you. But know that most people you know will live at home. Unless you know tons of nepo babies, then good luck!
Friends are hard to keep or even come by
Remember what it was like after returning from your first year of college? How things were totally different with your home friends? Some stuck around, but others seemed to disappear off the planet and out of your life? Guess what, it’s the same thing again.
This filtering of friends is normally nothing planned. Especially if you went to school out of state, or your friend did, it will never be easier to see them than when you were in school together. It gets infinitely harder to see your friends, whether it be distance, not having the time, or both. One of my best friends is a manager at a restaurant, so her two days off are during the week. For my job, I get the weekends off, which for her are her busiest days. Two of my other best friends are in grad school, one not far from me, the other is eight hours away. The one that isn’t far away, it’s still sometimes difficult to plan with since we’re both so busy.
If you and your friends aren’t planning on moving in together, or at least moving to the same city, the sad news is that you probably won’t be seeing them too often. This is the most difficult part of life after college. We go from being incredibly social, the most social we might be in our lives, to isolated. It’s like you have to choose whether you have your family and money, or friends and no money in life after college graduation.
Support & Fulfillment
Hopefully, you have either friends or family nearby to support you. Both are ideal, but some people have neither. Like at the beginning of college, you have to build a new community, but without the resources college offers. That’s one of the biggest responsibilities you have to yourself as an adult.
Fortunately, that also can be your peace, depending on the way you look at it. There is peace in only having to interact with people you truly want to be around. Your heart becomes so full when you do get to spend time with the ones you love but can’t always see. There is a quiet strength and confidence that comes with enjoying your friends, but also enjoying your own presence. Being someone you like, being your own best friend is vital to life after college graduation, but more so to having a happy and fulfilling life in total. It’s something important to me, that I write about on this blog. If you want to learn more about how to become your own bff, check out this post.
Life is monotonous
After graduating and starting to work a full time job, it’s a bit scary to see the amount of free time you have. Life after college graduation has a fraction of the free time compared to what you had during school. Easily, you can slip into the pattern of working 9-5, getting home, scrolling on your phone or watching TV, making dinner, showering, going to bed. Over, and over, and over and then life feels monotonous. If you don’t have any big life changing goals, you might feel like you will be at the same job doing the same thing, the same day over and over, for the next 100 years. To break the cycle, you need to fill the time you have with things you enjoy.
When you get home from work, scrolling feels like an easy break for your brain and a way to relax. Unless you have a time limit for your favorite apps, you might be taking time away from other things you could be doing! Unless you want to be the person that comes home from work and scrolls online for hours on end every day, you need to buy up hobbies. The best way to make life interesting is to invest in your own social capital; things that make you interesting to be around and interested in life.
Get a hobby ASAP
I personally signed up for a 7 week wheel throwing pottery class when I got home. While I knew I liked pottery from when I was younger, I didn’t know how I’d like to use the wheel. After completing my first 7-week session, I felt more in touch with my creativity. I was getting into the ‘flow state’ often, what people call that sensation of getting lost in what you’re doing. I met fun local people and signed up for another 7 weeks!
Finding something you’re passionate about isn’t so much a choice, as it is a feeling, so definitely try out different hobbies you’ve been interested in throughout your life. I tried lots of hobbies, some I still do occasionally, to see what fits. Another blog post I wrote here is all about getting yourself out of a rut when life after college gets lonely or repetitive. Additionally, I have my tried and true list here of best hobbies for the post grad kid to build community in a post college world.
If you find the right hobby for you, whether that’s a sport, something arts and craft related, hiking, X, etc, will give you something to look forward to and make life a bit more interesting.
Take advantage of the freedom
Going from the structure of school, and basically being told what your life will look like every year up until you’re 22, to complete and utter freedom, feels wrong at first. We’re used to having everyone tell us what to do! And now this insane level of freedom feels overwhelming. Fortunately, as life progresses you will have more and more commitments becoming less free by the year. Look at this as a good thing – this is the most free you will ever be!
This freedom gives you the space to do whatever you want to do. Life after college graduation does not intrinsically have to mean getting a 9-5. You have your entire life to work. Once you start working, life gets way less free. Why not try something new out? Is there a fun job that isn’t “practical” or makes a ton of money that you know would fulfill you? Have you always wanted to travel? Like work as a bartender in Mykonos for the summer, or as a ski instructor at Vail? At the point that is the pinnacle of freedom for your entire life, why not do something with it?
As I mentioned a bit earlier, I moved to Spain to teach English. I worked 15 hours a week and was able to pay for my apartment and food with that money. With my savings, I traveled every other weekend for the 9 months that I was gone. I also lived on an island called Ibiza, and had the best time ever.
I think as a college kid, I did have this perspective already about life after college, but wish I could have shared this sentiment with more of my friends. Let this freedom not be anxiety inducing, but exciting!
Help Future You Now
While life after college graduation is something that will hit you out of nowhere and get you in your feelings regardless, there are little things you can do now, while in college, to set yourself up for success. Personally, I wish I took my finances more seriously while I was in college.
I wrote a whole blog post about post grad finance tips, but a few of these I wish I started during college. I did some things well, like getting my own credit card. Specifically, I wish I started investing sooner! People make it out to be a very complicated thing, which it can be, but the majority of people only invest in index funds (they’re made up of different stocks making them more safe; if one goes down, another might go up and balance out any loss). I wish I joined some kind of finance or investing related club to learn more, or went to some kind of personal finance seminar to learn what I know now way earlier.
Saving up
While it feels impossible to think about saving for retirement this early, it might be the only way our generation will be able to. Unfortunately, life is the most expensive it’s ever been. Most people don’t think they’ll be able to ever afford a house. I wish I started saving, just a little more for the future when I was in college. Even if I put $50 or $100 a month into a High Yield Savings Account or to an investment account, it could have gone so far!
As I mentioned before, during college and life after college graduation are two of the times with the most freedom. Why not take time to learn things that will help ‘future you’ out? Set yourself up for financial, or any kind, of success by thinking and acting proactively.
Conclusion
I could have never predicted the perspective and differences in myself from current me, to college me. If you can’t tell, I’m the type of person always trying to improve and better myself. While I did a good job setting myself up for success, there are always some things I wish I did better.
If you are in college, live it up! It’s such an exciting time of your life; it’s incomparable to any other part. While most people in the beginning hate life after college, remember your life and the quality is based on your decisions! Make good ones that work for you. And once you have more money than you’ve ever had in your life, coming in those bi-weekly paychecks, you’ll definitely see the bright side of post grad life!
Best of luck!
Emily
