If you’ve just graduated or are close to finishing college, you’re probably feeling at least a little bit of anxiety regarding the direction of the rest of your life. Or a lot.
One moment, you’re happily procrastinating on midterms, flyering on Bruinwalk for your org event, and convincing first years to swipe you a free dorm meal, and the next, you’re clutching a graduation program, staring around in bewilderment at a sea of caps and gowns, and barely remembering to smile for the endless pictures that present themselves because you can not process what is happening.
“Congrats, grad!” Your family and everyone else beams and asks you what you’re going to do now that you’re in the real world and you frantically try to come up with the right answer but all you can think is "Huh?”
There is a pretty simple explanation for our confusion and our anxiety.
It’s called the linear path.
What is the linear path? …Well, most of us have been on it since we were very, very young. Let’s see if I can better explain through illustration.
When I was a wee 3rd grader, it was very easy to figure out my goals and priorities (aside from beating the Elite 4 on Pokemon Yellow and digging up beetles at recess). These were already set for me: getting good grades, and passing the Sat 9 test to qualify for 4th grade honors. Through all of elementary school and all of middle school and high school too, there was never a question of what the next step was or what my short term goal was. It was always about getting good grades, passing tests, and going to the next grade level. In high school it also became about scoring over a 2100 on the SAT and taking up as many leadership positions as I could in order to get into a good college. Then I got into a good college. At UCLA, my goal became about acing all my classes to look good for grad school and build up an impressive resume with extracurriculars for future jobs. Post-college, I took the next step and underwent a summer associate program and a temporary job in public policy.
This is the linear path we’ve undergone for our entire lives, kind of mindlessly in a way, because the next step is always highlighted in neon yellow in front of our faces. There’s no question of what comes after.
Now, the next step suddenly isn’t a complete no-brainer. Ahh, our twenties.
There is so much anxiety in the twenties. Because for the first time in our lives, the next step isn’t obvious to us. And instead of being okay with that, we panic. We feel so much pressure to know what that next step is, RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. To have a satisfactory answer to the question so often posed to us: What do you want to do with your life?
What’s next? People ask me. Grad school, right? A job as a legislative staffer or field organizer?
Well, of course you’re going to go to grad school soon, my mom informs me. You’ll be more competitive and it’ll look good to future employers.
Well yeah, that seems to be the sensible next step. Definitely is according to the linear path.
But why does it have to be this way?
Why do we need to follow a linear path? Why do we need to know what career we want to go into RIGHT THE FUCK NOW?
Why do we have to go to grad school to be successful? And why is everyone assuming that we’re gonna work for someone else?
Why does no one encourage us to start something unconventional and to pave our own path?
Most importantly, what quantifies as “greatest level of success”, and why is no one talking about “greatest level of happiness”?
Because I think that’s what it’s all about, in the end. How happy we are with our careers and our lives in general. And what concerns me most is seeing so many people who just graduated college hasten to seek the next step without first really stopping to find out what it is they they TRULY want to do with their lives. I want to be a political advisor and then a professor, they declare, and then set off to public policy school. How do you know you wanna do that and blow $100K on grad school without experience in political advising? How do you know you wouldn’t rather do something else?
I think sometimes we purposely do not ask ourselves these questions because it’s easier not to. It’s very daunting to ask ourselves questions that we may not have the answers to.
And we follow this formula because we’re so scared of being failures and being poor and we need some kind of guarantee that that won’t happen to us. And honestly, who can blame us, because we’ve been conditioned to accept this ready made process for years. Pick a good school, pick a major, go to grad school, go into a sensible and conventional sounding career. We don’t really know HOW to choose our own unique path.
But we can’t let our decisions be dictated by our fears. Because what kind of life is a fear-driven one?
I think we should take risks in our twenties. Exploring the private sector. Taking a campaign job on an issue we care about a lot. Attempting to start our own business. Traveling. Experimenting with different fields and having adventures and experiences that will challenge and grow us and make us learn about who we are and what we ultimately want to do.
Because what better time than now to be daring, while we’re not tied down to a family and a house and a job we can’t leave? We have the rest of our life to build a stable career.
What do you want to do with your life?
I used to BS this question and make up answers on the spot (lobbyist, civil rights attorney, non profit consultant), but now I’ve started to answer it truthfully. "I don’t know," I confidently reply.
I am rewarded with many dubious looks for this, but I think it’s completely acceptable. In fact, I think it’s incredibly exciting.
So here’s to officially stepping off the linear path. Here’s to starting your business, to throwing your major out the window, to teaching English in whatever foreign-ass country you want to go to. Here’s to uncertainty. Here’s to learning. And growing. And living.
