Graduating from college feels so good. Walking out of the building after taking your last final exam or turning in your last essay, you feel as though you’ve lost that pesky freshman fifteen in a matter of seconds.
Being finished is strange, too, and for the first time in a long time, you finally feel like you’re not forgetting to do something. You celebrate, participate in a ceremony and are congratulated by friends and family. And then, if it hasn’t already, reality sinks in. You’ve just invested at least four years and tens of thousands of dollars in your education, and now you have to do something with it.
At this point, your career might take any shape, and may not necessarily have anything to do with your major. Former poet laureate Ted Kooser wrote a poem called “The Possible Lives” on the subject, which begins “There were once so many I might choose among, / like a warehouse of coats and shoes and all my size. / Walking the streets I imagined myself in every house, / happy with whichever woman might be living there.” Notice that the first line is written in the past tense, and that the speaker of the poem has already made the decisions that changed his life into “the only one” he could have had.
Of course, living in any house or having any career is probably not a realistic option. Your options will probably be something more like this: start working, travel, join a service organization (like the Peace Corps), or apply to graduate school. When considering graduate school, you will have to think about whether you want to go straight from working on one degree into working on another, or if you’d like to take some time off.
Many careers do not require a graduate degree; however, getting one can provide you with more earning and advancement potential. Some fields do require an advanced degree, such as those in medicine, justice and academia. If your career of choice requires such a degree, or if you feel you would really benefit from earning one, you should search for the ideal program with focus and attention to detail. But that search need not necessarily take place during your last year of college, so that you can begin the next fall. After spending four years within the university environment, you have to ask yourself: I am ready to spend another two or three or more doing research, writing essays, and taking exams?
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