Facing Uncertainty After Graduation

When it was time for us to graduate from high school, most of us knew (if not all) where we would be going afterwards. Some of us would travel abroad for university while others would remain in the country and start with their studies. Sometimes, the start of our university years is bumpy; we don’t exactly know what we want to do or how. But by the end of our education, we have a pretty clear idea of what it is we want to do and what we want to be “when we grow up.” Growing up here has nothing to do with age, its actually having your degree and starting your career.

Graduating from university is nothing like graduating from high school. As much as we plan for our future, this is the point where we face uncertainty. This uncertainty is not because we don’t know what we want, as a matter of fact, we do know what we want, the uncertainty is because we don’t know what will happen and sometimes even how it will happen.

As much as we tell ourselves that everything is in our hands and we can achieve everything we set our minds to, reality strikes us and we realize that it is not really in our hands and sometimes there’s nothing we can really do.

So we apply for jobs, some might even apply for graduate schools, and believe it or not, matters are not in our hands once we submit our papers. The waiting starts; waiting for either acceptance or rejection. This is the core uncertainty.

It becomes scary, not knowing what we’re going to do after the summer holidays. The years that passed we thought, “Oh the new semester would start,” but now, there is no semester and summer might not be our official holiday anymore; our whole system changes, our annual schedule of holidays and classes are no longer there.

We might adapt to these changes, we might even enjoy and love our new system more than the one before it. But things still remain uncertain. This phase we go through what can be very stressful; we mostly go through it in our last semester of our undergrad studies or at times a month or two before graduation.

So we’ve got two options at hand, either freak out for the next couple of months until a graduate school sends us a letter (with unknown content) or a job comes up. Or we can relax and enjoy our time until life unfolds the future. What would it be?