The Post-Grad Journey: The Ultimate Six-Months-Out Survival Guide

If you Google “Post-Grad,” a lot of articles come up about suffering from depression once you graduate college. And yes, I will say that it can be depressing at times, but really — it’s not so bad. Although the last six months have gone by incredibly fast, I have learned a lot when it comes to adjusting to life outside of college.

By Charlsie Niemiec

So, here’s the ultimate post-grad survival kit (or at least what I’ve figured out over the last six months):

1. Stay Busy – Keep your ass moving at all times. Don’t hang out on the couch day after day, keep busy – whether it’s working a job, interning, or taking pottery classes.  Do anything that will keep you busy. I’ve thrown myself into the LSAT, and trust me, it’s kept me occupied. Who knows how I’ll feel once my LSAT journey is over, but for now … it’s what I do to keep busy. Busy leaves little room to do #2.

2. Don’t reminisce too much – If you do nothing but think about college, you’re going to do nothing but miss college. Avoid this as much as you can. If something comes up in conversation, talk about it, but don’t sit in your room and look at pictures from your sophomore year every night. It’s okay to admit that college was one of the best times of your life, but it’s not okay to let that ‘best time of your life’ define the rest of your life. You should have the attitude that the best is yet to come and college was just a stepping stone. Or yeah, you’ll be depressed like all those articles say.

3. Do something you didn’t do in college – Find a new hobby or something you didn’t participate in throughout college. For example, I have never been a runner. And I wouldn’t call myself a runner even now. But since graduation, I have clocked in many miles on the boardwalk (this is a plus of living in CA) and on the treadmill as I possibly can. My college self wouldn’t have taken the time to just run. Doing something that you aren’t used to doing shows you that more things exist than what you thought about in college. It can be anything:  take up painting, wine tastings, or knitting. Join a gym. Become a mentor. Anything you didn’t do in college.

4. Change it up – Your overall appearance probably didn’t change too much throughout college. Now that you’re a post-grad, you should definitely change something … even if it’s something small. Cut your hair. Paint your nails a color you would never wear in college (I was afraid of black nail polish in college, but now I love it). Change your style. While I don’t think you should abandon yourself from the last four years, a little update won’t hurt. It will make you feel better about yourself and it will signify this new, mature stage in your life.

5. Be serious – While you may have had an attitude that says “I don’t care” in college, it’s time to get serious about your future. You definitely don’t have to have anything figured out, but you should be serious about getting to whatever point you want in your life next. If you don’t know what you want to do (seriously, who truly knows what they want to do?), you should do everything to try to figure it out. Be serious about this. It may have been cool in high school and sometimes in college to be a slacker or to just not care , but you should be able to seriously talk about what you want.

6. Change Your Mind – In college, I had everything planned out and followed a strict routine when it came to everything –  I never changed my mind. However, the most important thing post-grad has taught me is that changing your mind can be a gift. One day, you want to intern somewhere and the next day you don’t. It may not be on the path you wanted, but you figured out why and it’s a big eye-opener. The only way to figure things out is to make mistakes and to change your mind. It sounds like something out of a self-help book, but I seriously think this has been the most beneficial thing overall.

I know I’m not the only post-grad over here at CollegeCandy, so tell me … what are your ultimate survival tips for being a post-grad?