• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer
College Magazine logo

College Magazine

College Life, Dating, Career & Campus Advice

  • Colleges
    • College Guides
    • College Rankings
    • Campus Life
      • Academics
      • Dating
      • Freshman Year
      • Health
      • Social Change
      • Party
    • Find Your College
  • Majors
    • All Majors
    • Most Popular Majors
    • Choosing a Major
  • Intern
    • Internship Directory
    • How to Get an Internship
    • How to Write a Resume
    • How to Write a Cover Letter
    • How to Interview
    • How to Network
    • Career 101
    • Find Your Passion Career
  • Money
    • How to Make Money
    • How to Save Money
    • How to Get a Job
    • Credit Cards 101
    • FAFSA
    • Ramen Project
  • Travel
    • Study Abroad
    • College Spring Break
    • How to Travel Cheap
    • Things to Do
  • Shop
    • College Magazine Shop
    • Gift Guides
    • College Packing List
Home » Latest Posts » I Graduated in the Spring and I Still Don’t Know What I’m Doing
Graduation

I Graduated in the Spring and I Still Don’t Know What I’m Doing

Facebook Tweet
Morgan Robertson   September 13, 2018

I packed my college life away. I put away all my notebooks, tests, old jobs and Cal sweatshirts. I put it all away in boxes, some still unpacked, cluttered and disorganized. I hit the road and drove down south, from the Bay to LA. My feelings were the only thing that I didn’t see fade away in my rear view mirror as I drove off. Along with the excitement of graduating and starting a new season in my life came a wave of anxiety and nervousness. This didn’t occur to me until my undergraduate college experience was out of hind sight, suddenly these feelings clouded the car. I felt a bit off balance and a little out of place.

When I moved back home and began to unpack some of my things, I felt this sudden pause on my life.

Even time passed in slow motion. From the intense pace of final exams and crazy commotion of graduation to going home and relaxing. Realizing that I had nothing to do seemed like a foreign concept. I was finally done. I had decided to take that first month off after graduation. I picked up a little guitar, lounged by the pool and spent my time divided between reading and watching Netflix. I had things lined up, of course, but not until the fall. While other friends immediately after graduation jumped into the workplace or flew across the world to travel, I was at home, waiting for my life to begin.

Morgan Robertson, Ian Kolaja, Pierre Curillo

Then, life unpaused, hit play and then fast forwarded everything. What I quickly realized, as I began to panic, was that my life had already begun, and time was slipping through my fingers. My thoughts caught up with me. I needed to figure out what to do. I am the type that always kept busy and when I am not busy I feel like I am being left out, doing something wrong or falling behind. It took many conversations with my mom, my aunts, my uncles and my grandparents to convince me that I wasn’t behind, that I did have a plan and that I wasn’t a failure.

I was flooded with comments and words of encouragement of how proud my family was of me. But at the same time, I left UC Berkeley and my college life with a few loose ends: friends who were staying when I was leaving, clubs that I had loved (and still do), a stressful job, relationships that had only just begun and many relationships that had hardly had an ending. Those things, to me, felt like failures. All on top of the fact, that unlike many friends and peers that I know, I didn’t have a job. This lead to a great deal of anxiety and pressure, when in reality, I didn’t need those things in my life just yet.

Thankfully, I wasn’t left standing with empty hands. I had writing internships. I had family. I had programs that I would get involved in later in the summer, but I still felt like I wasn’t doing enough. Now, after having done two programs, had meetings, various phone call meetings with my parents, I am left spinning. The summer has ended and on the brink of fall, I am still in transition: out of college, out of the internships, out of hotel rooms, out of programs and offices. This time, I now realize, is about giving myself time. Letting myself explore. Find out what I want to do and what I need to do in order to really understand who I am, to give me, myself and I some room to breathe.

Don’t get me wrong, being a recent college graduate comes with a lot of perks. It’s what I had been looking forward to from the very beginning of my senior year. Being able to walk across the stage, receive my diploma and say that “I did it!” was a huge milestone and a huge accomplishment.

Morgan Robertson

As freshmen, sophomores and juniors, we think a lot about life after college: what we will be, what we will do and where we will live. But for a lot of us, we get so caught up in graduating that we don’t think about what life after college will feel like.

I didn’t think that after graduation I would feel so exhausted, relieved and ready to go. I was ready to move on to the next thing but, to my dismay, that next thing didn’t come for about a month. For that first month out of college, I was lonely and anxious trying to figure out what my next step was because, unlike a lot of people I know, I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I didn’t know where I would fit out there in the real world.

Failure, disappointment and even shame can creep up on you in so many ways, especially post grad. It is important that, as fresh college graduates, we recognize that those thoughts and feelings do not represent truth. What is true is that we have done everything that we can and have prepared to the best of our ability for the real world. Your failures are not your truth. Failures are simply (here comes the super cliché part) learning experiences.

And to future college grads: that is okay. We may not know what we want to do or who we want to become, and we may fail and flail along the way but that’s okay. We all operate according to our own timeline. “You’re in your own time zone. You are not late. You are not early. You are very much on time.”

I am here to say that coming out of college and not having a job or a five-year plan is okay. Just having internships and part-time jobs is good enough. Don’t give up on the dream because the dream is coming.

About Morgan Robertson

Morgan is a senior English Major at UC Berkeley. She has stacks and stacks of writing that hopefully will be seen one day. She loves singing and is currently a thriving YouTube ukulele student.

10 Steps to Take Before Graduating from Florida A&M University

The Ultimate Senior Year Checklist

Transitioning from a Student in College to a Professional in the Real World

Don’t Panic! How to Get Extra College Credits When Falling Behind

Friendship post-grad

A Tale of Friendship, Communication and Post-Grad Life

No Cap Here: 35 Creative Graduation Caps for 2021

The Ultimate Auburn University Bucket List: 21 Things to Do Before Graduating

pensive

Tackling the Beast After 2020: Applying to Graduate School

graduates throwing caps

How College Seniors Cope with COVID-19

Previous Post:10 Reasons Education Majors Actually Want to Go Into Teaching
Next Post:I’m a Senior Who Doesn’t Have It All Figured Out

colleges

  • College Guides
  • College Rankings
  • Campus life
  • Academics
  • Dating
  • Freshmen Year
  • Health
  • Party

majors

  • All College Majors
  • Most Popular Majors
  • Choosing a Major

intern

  • Internships Directory
  • How to Write a Resume
  • How to Write a Cover Letter
  • How to Interview
  • How to Get an Internship
  • How to Network

money

  • How to Make Money
  • How to Save Money
  • How to Get a Job
  • Credit Cards 101
  • College Loans

travel

  • Study Abroad
  • College Spring Break
  • How to Travel Cheap
  • Things to Do

shop

  • College Packing List
  • Gift Guides
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS Feed
  • Twitter
  • About Us
  • Team
  • Write
  • Apply
  • Privacy Policy
  • Sign Up
  • Advertise
  • My Account
  • Cart

College Magazine logo

Copyright © 2023 Powered by BizBudding