Wednesday 30 April 2014

Life after graduation- it's not what you planned, and that's okay

We all do it. We all go to university or college with a big plan in mind.
You'll go, you'll learn, you'll party, and at the end of it you'll come out with a really great job.
Well wouldn't that be rainbows and fairy dust! .. The joke is on us.

When I went to university I originally had intentions to go to teachers college afterwards. I was enrolled in a concurrent program where teachers college was embedded into your first four years of your degree. And somehow, the university failed to mention to me that that year there were only 4,000  new teaching jobs available (Canada wide), and 17,000 teachers college graduates.
Sorry, what?!?!

When I found this out, I ran from that program like a prisoner escaping jail- never looking back.

University degrees don't cut it anymore. That really cool placement you did in college? It probably won't land you a job. It takes more than that now. But why didn't they tell us? Those educational institutions (that are meant to help us set up for our future) just sit there and grab our money but never say, "Hey, after you cough over that $20,000 you'll be hard pressed to find a job." Or "You're probably going to have to go back for a post graduate degree. Or work an unpaid internship. Or sell your soul to the devil."
I don't know about you, but it would have been helpful if I had known this in advance.

Yes, it's definitely shocking once you have that diploma in hand and then think, "Okay, now what? All that hard work for nothing?" But it won't be nothing. Your original plan after graduating probably isn't going to happen, this is true. But you know what? That's okay. Plan B is okay. Plan C is okay. Even plans X, Y and Z are okay. As long as you have a plan- some kind of a plan, with some kind of a goal, you're okay.

You're in the same boat as almost all the other graduates, so don't feel alone. Don't stress. Life is just like this- it doesn't go as planned. And all of us self-entitled Gen-Y graduates who believe we deserve a well reputable, well paying job after we graduate, well, apparently we don't, and we're all going to be figuring this out together.

Chin up. You'll figure it out.