Graduate in the 21st Century

by: Tessa Beach

“You’ll figure it out.” A response I received far too often my mentors what I should do and how to find myself. Now, I am a senior preparing to graduate, still unsure who I am and what career to follow. It’s even more difficult when you live in a world where living is to work every day. And the options are slim: either be stuck at an office job under fluorescent lights that blind my eyes and melt my brain into an early grave or miraculously secure a remote position where I can disintegrate my optic orbs and gray matter at home. All work and no play, and even if there is time to decompress, life sweeps you into the current of chaos. Others may reject my horrific description of office or stay-at-home work, saying that those who find what they love in a cubical skyscraper or through the blue light of a computer screen are nothing but a minuscule price to pay. You may be right, but I implore you to look slated momentarily.

I thought obtaining a bachelor’s degree would solve all the mysteries in the world so that I would be confident and secure in my life as an adult. I was led to believe that I would find what I am passionate about in college and be happy pursuing it regardless of financial gain, with a firm declaration that a degree would ensure good pay. But office life isn’t for everyone, nor can every graduate get hired out of college. Remote working is a luxury, harder to obtain than a regular nine-to-five, with downsides like isolation and immersion in home life and work. And what if you can’t keep a job down due to disability or burnout? What then? Should I apply for positions where I am overqualified and refused to pay my worth? Or should I go for the ones where I am underqualified, and an AI system rejects my résumé in the blink of an eye? Beginning adulthood in the 21st century is more challenging than the older generations care to admit, especially in the face of societal distress. One thing they never tell you is how they lie. You won’t always “figure it out,” and it doesn’t always “get better” just because your brain has finished cooking and you have the facade of freedom with an education. Adults struggle just as much as teenagers; they are unsure and don’t know the answer and often shoot into the dark, hoping to find anything that makes sense.

Discovering yourself is a grueling process that will expand across your entire life. Learning to grapple with that fact and tossing it into the ocean of chance is what life is all about: risk and discovery, falling and landing just to fall and land again. Some people may find meaning easily, and others, like me, reinvent themselves daily because “meaning’ is as ever-changing as the morning sky. So, no, I have no idea what my life as a graduate will be like, and I certainly have nothing figured out. All I have is a piece of paper with my name printed in a flourished font to brag about and zero job security. But maybe it’s my chance to light that paper on fire and set ablaze a flame nobody can stifle. The journey may not have been my catalyst, but the end of a chapter motivates me to write more, crave more, and, most of all, live more.