Seven Things That Will Happen to You Post-Graduation

1.  The sun will become a rare and precious commodity. 

If you live in California, you get a lot of sun, right?  You feel its warming rays routinely while walking to class, dodging the flyerers on BruinWalk, eating lunch outside, etc etc sun is nice and it’s always there during the day and you don’t think much about it. 

When you graduate and get a 9-5 job, your entire attitude towards sunlight will change.  You are inside an office building all day; you never see the sun on the weekdays.  It’s basically like when you have a boyfriend you’re used to hanging out with constantly and then he moves a few hours away so now you only see him on the weekends.  You get anxious then semi-depressed because of it and find excuses to go on ten minute walks where you just stand on the sidewalk with your eyes closed and your head tilted back in ecstasy, savoring every second the sunlight warms your face and for ten minutes you feel like a real person again.  I guess the boyfriend analogy equivalent of this is a ten minute Skype call or something, but sadly, I will never know what that feels like because I developed a severe fear of webcams my first year of college when my eco-terrorist people-hating roommate had her creepy boyfriend on Skype literally at all hours of the day and night and he would watch me sleep and he was therefore essentially Big Brother, only a vegan version.

2.  All of a sudden, you will have more free time on your hands than you know what to do with.  

You know all those 7 PM meetings and 8-10 rehearsals you had to go to and studying you had to do?  Those are all gone now.  After the clocks strikes 5, you are out of work and completely free!  To do….what?  What is life exactly without USAC meetings and a cappella rehearsals?  People handle this sudden freedom differently.  Some flourish and dedicate this time to the pursuit of new hobbies and working out.  Some panic and delve into the deep corners of the Internet and Netflix specifically.  So now you know why so many recent college graduates have been “liking” all your statuses lately.  We have so much goddamn time on our hands!

3.  Fun won’t just fall into your lap anymore; you must actively pursue it.

If you don’t want to spend all of your days on your Facebook newsfeed, you gotta be aggressive in finding new things to do with all this new free time.  I’ve been trying everything from playing basketball in the park with twelve year olds (they won….I bought them slurpies) and drawing chalk murals on the sidewalk with traveling artists (we got free pizza! the homeless have hella hookups) to hitting on then going out with my restaurant server (while on a failed online date) and becoming famous at the local dive bar’s weekly Karaoke night (this is as famous as I will ever get, but I have come to terms with that).  You have to be bolder than you’ve ever been before and this will be scary at first.  But the possibilities are limitless if you smile at people, start conversations, and generally carpe the fuck out of your diem.

4.  You can still drink every night- you just have to get started a lot earlier in order to successfully wake up for work the next day.  

I figured out the hard way that you can’t really just drink yourself into oblivion until three AM and wake up fully functional for work at 7.  Instead, this will happen.  Thankfully, God invented this brilliant thing called the Happy Hour, and you can be tossing back a Corona as early as 5:15 now (for a discounted price, too!).  Thank you for your generosity God, for now post-grads everywhere can still cling on to this one familiar part of our college years.  You just have to shift the drinkage up four hours or so so you can be tucked in bed by midnight (a good theory, anyway).  You’ll feel weird at first being hammered before sunset but you’ll quickly get over this.  

5.  Your circle of friends will shrink by at least 80%.  

In college, you have access to thousands of kids your age all within a mile radius of you.  Friendship, and mass friendship at that, is very easy.  When you graduate and move away, this ends.  A seven minute walk from De Neve Commons to Hedrick Summit (a trek we only made when we were feeling super active and generous) turns into a 30 minute BART train ride to SF- and that’s if you’re lucky.  Therefore, you quickly learn who the people in your life are that matter.  You’ll let go of 80% of your college “friends”, but that’s okay, because quality is better than quantity, and all those college friends will still like your Facebook statuses (the one instance where quantity matters, let’s be real). 

6.  You’ll struggle with your identity as an alumni of your respective college organizations.  

You love your old college groups and you want to stay connected to them, but you also don’t want to EVER be the creepy alumni who still hangs out on campus and is awkwardly present at all the rehearsals and in the most extreme cases, is fucking co-chair of one of the student government political parties (he doesn’t even go here!!).  It’s a complicated situation.  I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time wondering where exactly the line is between “supportive” and “creepy”.  I think going back to visit your orgs maybe once a quarter is okay.  Twice if you bring wine.

You’ll also have a HUGE urge to tell them all the things they are doing wrong and how you would have done it better, but you no longer are allowed to have a say in how the organization is run.  Instead, you must settle for occasionally posting passive aggressive remarks on Facebook with sassy hashtags (why is this the third time I’ve mentioned Facebook statuses in one post? Unhealthy). 

7.  You’ll discover there is a work life equivalent of high school prom and college sorority date nights- it is the company holiday party. 

One of the reasons I was sad to leave college was saying goodbye to eagerly-anticipated events like end of the year banquets, culture nights, annual club events, and date nights (okay I never went to a date night but maybe somewhere a sorority girl is reading this).  Maybe the working world doesn’t have those things, but there is one event that is the biggest deal ever:  the company holiday party.  Yeah, I used a picture of the Harry Potter Yule Ball to represent it because it’s THAT BIG OF A DEAL.  The company holiday party is glamorous.  There is speculation for weeks as to where it will be held.  There are free drinks and amazing three course meals.  There are presents that sometimes involve iPads.  AND YOU CAN BRING A DATE JUST LIKE THE YULE BALL.  Okay, granted I didn’t bring a date to mine but I still got sufficiently hammered, and that’s the important part.

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So in conclusion, post-grad life is definitely different, takes time to adjust to, but offers its own unique experiences for you to discover and a lot of these are good.  Yay!

The Linear Path

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.

How to Become the God of Bars in 5 Easy Steps (Straight Female Edition)

DISCLAIMER:  Please don’t take offense to this post, it’s all written in good fun and is meant to empower women, not disenchant males.  Happy reading!

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Girls, we all know the scenario- we just spent a grueling two hours in front of the mirror slathering copious amounts of paint on our faces and product on our hair.  If someone threw an object at our face it would probably crack.  We then got dressed in mini-skirts so short they can only be described as “confrontational” and teetering heels so high I’m sure there are several policy reports warning of their health ramifications.  Then we spent half an hour taking downward angled iPhone pictures of ourselves with the “teacup arm”-cellulite-reducing pose and another fifteen minutes picking out the most flattering Instagram filter. 

Photo credit: the miniskirt-bearing, teacup arm-wielding girls of Instagram

We are then self-proclaimed ready to go to the most crackin bar/club in the city to meet some super hot dudes.

Except we don’t.  We stand around and wait for them to meet us. 

Sure, we might make eye contact and smile suggestively and dance and even get our friends to introduce us, but we rarely just straight up approach a guy we really want to talk to.

This phenomena is so interesting to me, when you compare the enormous effort you put into looking good to attract guys and the ensuing incredibly feeble attempts you made to actually seal the deal.  Think about that weird incongruity, and then add on top of it the fact that because we are females, we have a very, very slim chance of getting rejected!  No guy is going to get creeped out by a female who starts a conversation with him.  No guy has ever snubbed and straight up refused to talk to a girl who went up to him at the bars.  Did you know that?? If you’re a girl, congrats!! You just discovered a superpower! 

Backstory: As a recent college graduate, I’ve realized that I have become increasingly more and more proactive in meeting random people around Berkeley and SF.  It’s kind of what you have to do when you’re new to a city and have as weirdly urgent a need for constant social interaction as I do.  But it wasn’t until my friend Lida and I took a roadtrip to Seattle and Vancouver that I really started to utilize this “female-in-a-bar superpower”.  It was really easy, and in 2 nights we had our strategy fine-tuned.  Both times we managed to successfully locate, approach, and (insert desired end result here) the hottest guys at each bar we went to.  

It’s an approach that has completely changed my going-out experience.  The tables have literally figuratively turned.  Now my friends and I are empowered to approach the guys that we actually want to talk to, instead of passively sitting back and wishing this random weird dude with questionable hygiene would go away.  Now, we are the Gods of Bay Area Bars.  And now, you can be too.

5 Easy Steps to Become the God of Bars 

1.  YOUR ACCOMPLICES

What did we toast to again? Oh yeah, 100% success rate 

Your approach will vary depending on who accompanies you.  I’ve found that the most effective method by far is to go out with just one other female friend.  Taking more than three friends discourages meeting new people, because a), it’s easy to stick to yourselves, and b), even if you’re chickening out, guys don’t approach large groups of girls in general because they find them intimidating. With just one other girl, you two can do a tag-team effort with two or three guys, and conversation will never be lacking.

Going by yourself is also a definite possibility if friends are unavailable- you can still approach people, and when they ask where your friends are, you either say you lost them, or say “they’re over there” and vaguely gesture to a large crowd of people. 

2.  BAR-SWEEP

When you first get to the bar, don’t bother getting drinks (pre-game if you need a confidence boost, but don’t spend any money!).  Your first action needs to be a bar-sweep, aka walking through the entire bar and identifying your target(s).  AIM HIGH.  Don’t go for the lonely guy in the corner that you think will talk to you, go for simply the hottest guy in the entire bar.  That’s the point of this entire post- to conquer all mortals catch a hot guy. If you can’t find any, more on to the next bar.

3.  MOVING IN

Once you’ve identified your target, immediately take action.  It is important to do this fast- it is scientifically proven that the longer you wait, giggling with your friends and psyching yourself out (“oh my gawd, should I do it?”), the less likely it is that you will follow through.  

Your opening line can vary depending on how bold you’re feeling.  But honestly, it doesn’t really matter what you say, because 95% of guys will just be stoked that for once, the girl is the one that approaches him.  From my experience, no matter how attractive the guy was, he was always down to talk and usually said how cool it was that I went up to him.  I’ve said something as simple as “Hey, how’s it going?” as an opener, but the most fun line is this: “Hey, I think you’re really cute!”  When guys hear this, they act as if they’ve never received a compliment in their entire life.  They are stunned.  Flabbergasted.  Unsure if anything in life anymore is real.  Trust me, it’s awesome.

4.  SCORE A DRINK (OR SEVERAL)

I’ve been debating over the best method for this for a long time.  And I’ve finally concluded that there are only two types of guys that exist at bars:  The kind that will willingly offer to buy you a drink, and the kind that are too cheap to ever do it, even if you’ve been talking for an hour and you keep hinting at your sobriety.  If getting a free drink is your top priority and you’ve been talking to someone for over ten minutes without results, you must accept this guy is a type 2 and move on. 

However, from my experience, 85% of guys will be very willing to buy you a drink if you were the one that took initiative to approach them.  So this is good news. 

Another way to ensure your free drink is to talk to someone who is already at the bar or very close to it.  Bonus if they are just about to order.  Your chances of getting a drink using this method go up about 95%. 

5.  WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO NEXT

This next part is up to you and is quite easy.  Want to make out?  He’s not gonna refuse.  Want his number? Get it.  Just want to be friends? That’s fine too.  I trust that this all will come naturally.

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I am a straight female, so this guide obviously isn’t applicable to everyone.  I’m thinking of letting my brother guest write on how straight guys do it, because he has fine-tuned his approach and it would be very helpful to a lot of dudes, but it would also be weird because he’s my brother so I am not sure how I feel about that yet.  Any LGBT folks are also welcome to guest write on their best practices! 

Remember, essentially in the end it’s not about how physically attractive you are as a female.  It’s about confidence.  Your confidence is killer, and it’s what will define your experience.

Now go out there and catch some hot dudes.  Because you are the God of Bars!