I dunno if I'm any kind of authority on this stuff, but I'll offer my thoughts. Take them as you will. BTW, I'm a verbose thinker. I reccommend that anybody attempting to read this comment first grab a cup of tea or a beer or something.
1. THANK YOU for talking about something other than wrestling. :-P I give a fuck about you and enjoy the chance to talk with you about something I can at least pretend to know about.
2. About this quarter life crisis thing: It seems pretty inevitable. You get out of school at some point and kinda go, "Well, now what?" I have an acquaintance who also just got out of grad school intending to get a job. But after spending a season or so hunting for a job, she decided to work food service and mooch off her parents until the fall and then go for her PHD, because she's frustrated and afraid of the real world. Don't make that mistake. More papers don't necessarily make you more employable, specially without that elusive resume item: experience. I'm starting to realize why all these employers want workers with experience of some kind that's not school. LIFE the UNIVERSE and EVERYTHING are totally different from school. It's important to get out and explore and live. I don't think people plan their career paths as much as they kind of discover them, make them up, or cut them out of nothing along the way. So don't feel bad if you don't know where you're going or what you're doing. I haven't either until I've gotten there. (And then I immediately set out again for more points unknown, so it's a fleeting satisfaction at best.) Nobody has this stuff planned out from the start. You fake it until you make it. Anyway, my point is that transitioning from school to the real world is never easy and putting it off probably just makes it harder.
3. Let's see, when I got out of undergrad, it was less than 4 months until I had to move away from the 'rents to avoid physical abuse. This was in spite of the fact that I had no career plans and only the money I'd earned from temping those four months. I moved randomly 750 miles from everyone and everything I knew. It took two years of being depressed, lonely and working crap jobs/being unemployed before I found a work situation with a minimum of soul suckage that still pays (most of) the bills. It took me another six months on top of that before I made any friends down here. I was in and out of therapy. I bought and totaled my first car. (Which was payed for almost entirely by family help. Could never have afforded one on my own.) I was freaking out over my student debt. Sharon and I fought steadily about the state and status of our relationship. The whole scene was just a drag. It was one challenge after another. It was scary and difficult and painful and a total journey into the unknown. Obviously, I worked through a lot of it. But I keep screwing up too. Now, I'm feeling the crush of the fact that this spring, it'll have been four years since I graduated from college. I feel like I need to have some big accomplishment by then. (Buying a house, recording an album, etc...) and I don't know if it's going to happen. More scariness. Who knows, maybe the pressure will help.
End part one. See part two. I told you this shit was long.
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Thoughts from somebody who didn't go to grad school and had to deal with a lot of this 2 years ago
Date: 2006-11-14 02:29 am (UTC)1. THANK YOU for talking about something other than wrestling. :-P I give a fuck about you and enjoy the chance to talk with you about something I can at least pretend to know about.
2. About this quarter life crisis thing: It seems pretty inevitable. You get out of school at some point and kinda go, "Well, now what?" I have an acquaintance who also just got out of grad school intending to get a job. But after spending a season or so hunting for a job, she decided to work food service and mooch off her parents until the fall and then go for her PHD, because she's frustrated and afraid of the real world. Don't make that mistake. More papers don't necessarily make you more employable, specially without that elusive resume item: experience. I'm starting to realize why all these employers want workers with experience of some kind that's not school. LIFE the UNIVERSE and EVERYTHING are totally different from school. It's important to get out and explore and live. I don't think people plan their career paths as much as they kind of discover them, make them up, or cut them out of nothing along the way. So don't feel bad if you don't know where you're going or what you're doing. I haven't either until I've gotten there. (And then I immediately set out again for more points unknown, so it's a fleeting satisfaction at best.) Nobody has this stuff planned out from the start. You fake it until you make it. Anyway, my point is that transitioning from school to the real world is never easy and putting it off probably just makes it harder.
3. Let's see, when I got out of undergrad, it was less than 4 months until I had to move away from the 'rents to avoid physical abuse. This was in spite of the fact that I had no career plans and only the money I'd earned from temping those four months. I moved randomly 750 miles from everyone and everything I knew. It took two years of being depressed, lonely and working crap jobs/being unemployed before I found a work situation with a minimum of soul suckage that still pays (most of) the bills. It took me another six months on top of that before I made any friends down here. I was in and out of therapy. I bought and totaled my first car. (Which was payed for almost entirely by family help. Could never have afforded one on my own.) I was freaking out over my student debt. Sharon and I fought steadily about the state and status of our relationship. The whole scene was just a drag. It was one challenge after another. It was scary and difficult and painful and a total journey into the unknown. Obviously, I worked through a lot of it. But I keep screwing up too. Now, I'm feeling the crush of the fact that this spring, it'll have been four years since I graduated from college. I feel like I need to have some big accomplishment by then. (Buying a house, recording an album, etc...) and I don't know if it's going to happen. More scariness. Who knows, maybe the pressure will help.
End part one. See part two. I told you this shit was long.