The looming fear of adulthood.
Even though I am older than all of my fellow students and most of my teachers, graduating college brings this deep, scary fear. Unlike most of my fellow students I have held jobs and have lived on my own for years before coming to Detroit Mercy to be a full-time student. I’ve been promoted, fired, and even voted for a couple presidents.
Graduating in the spring, however, isn’t something I have done before. To be honest it scares the crap out of me.
Nothing is changing except the expectations of finding an awesome job and maybe a pay check that will make everyone on Facebook jealous.
I know a lot of students are thinking the same thing. I think social media changed my perspective completely. Before social media we could have whatever job we wanted and it was fine.
Now we live in an environment where it’s so important what our image is. How we dress, what we do and where we work. The job of where we work is such a big part of our identity. It’s more important than how we dress and what we do in our free time.
This has brought so much stress to not only on myself but to many others that I have spoken with.
I heard from different working professionals that millennials will not work at the same company for more than a couple years. This is a completely different mindset from our parents and grandparents who worked for the same company for ten plus years or as long as their whole life. This is a completely different world that we are about to walk into. So all this truth comes crashing down when I think about graduating after next semester.
The best advice I have been given is do what you love and everything else will come together. I left being an electrician for almost nine years to pursue my passion of multimedia and film production. I left a good job and my the state that I lived in for this dream. I found a job and I am able to pay the bills while finishing my undergrad. It all worked out.
Was it stressful? Yes, Was it simple? No, Is it worth it? Yes.
Does anything of that make it easier for me to think about graduating? Not really.
Maybe when it comes time I will land a job making $100,000 a year and be able to compete with all my Facebook friends. No matter what happens I will soon be a full fledged adult and hopefully I will have an adult job to go with my new title.
Schaible is VN Layout Editor.
