how to: life post college graduation

For the first two decades + of our lives, we spend at least 75% of our time enrolled in school. The goal is always to make it to the next round of teachers, papers, and exams, until one day it stops. Depending on your experience, you may or may not feel prepared, but either way one day you wake up and realize that you are done with school (even if only for now) and you must move along into adult life, pretending you know what you are doing. Now when did that happen?!

Here comes my personal story. Feel free to continue if you want to learn you are not the only one who went through a quarter life crisis about what to do with yourself. 

• Freshman year: take generals, meet boys, and stay up too late. 
• Sophomore year: pick major (psychology), meet future husband, complain about finals. 
• Junior year: pick career ("therapy", whatever that means), get married, ignore the fact that college is halfway over. 
• Senior year: narrow down career ("marriage and family therapy" - now what is that again and how do I start?), realize I should have graduation plans, panic and then proceed to take the GRE and apply to one school (seriously?! you only applied to one competitive program, what were you thinking self?!), not get in to grad school, pretend life will resolve itself after finals.
• Graduation: YAY we made it! what are you doing next? No idea. Literally no grad school plans, no job lined up, and no inkling of what to do next or what I would be interested in.

What followed was an entire summer of unemployment and self reflection. Some of this was good, and some bad. I'll shorten the pros and cons for you. 

Pros:

• I purged and cleaned and organized and purged some more and it felt GREAT!
• I reflected on how when I was in school I felt pressure to go to grad school or have life plans, but I didn't and I started to realize I wasn't the only one and that was ok. I could take time to actually think through my next step in life. 
• I was able to start a new hobby! Google "quilling". If you're impressed, come buy something from me. 
• I had the time and availability to visit WAY too many potential apartments and EVENTUALLY find us a new great place that we moved into mid/end July.

Cons:

• I felt like a failure in my major, to my school, and for myself. I had literally no plans and no idea where to get started. I was basically too scared and ashamed to try to get help or attempt make plans. I "saved" myself with the excuse that I couldn't apply for jobs yet because I was going out of town for two weeks at the end of the summer. 
• I had way too much time on my hands and was bored most of the time. I watched too many YouTube videos, Netflix movies, and spent an inordinate time on social media sites. 
• I was really lonely. I sometimes went out with friends, but it was hard to reach out to ask anyone to hang out with me because I didn't want to inconvenience them. I also didn't want to have the "what are you doing now?" talk. Most days were spent waiting for my husband to get home and then blabbing/crying his ear off when he finally did. 
• I didn't know if anyone else felt the same way. I didn't know if anyone else was struggling with what to do, or if I was the only one bored, lonely, and stuck. 

So what happened? At the end of the summer, my one move was to casually post on Facebook that I was looking for a job. A friend mentioned that someone she knew said that the elementary school she was working at was looking for aides. I called the school, came in to talk to them, and accepted a part time, not super high pay position, but hey - it was a job, it wasn't in the food industry or retail, and I happen to really like kids. 

We also got pregnant in August and are expecting a baby around May 1 (for an entirely different story on how that came to be, go here). So for now I work a good portion of the time, spend my day off doing errands and housework, and still spend an inordinate amount of time on social media. I also  have no plans beyond taking care of baby once it's here, but life has moved forward. 

The moral of the story? I have yet to figure that out. I was grateful for the opportunity to pause and think about my next step, but that was also (and still is) super scary and apparently I'm not as good at the whole vulnerability thing as I had thought. I do have one secret hope that someone else who either had a similar experience, or who fears this experience, will take comfort in the fact that they are not the only one. For those who would appreciate a religious aspect, I think the other thing I learned (and am still learning) is that God has a plan for my life and that that plan is probably not what I was thinking it was and that's ok - all will be well and figured out somehow and at some point.