graduated college + unmotivated? try this.

Oct 31

Ever since you graduated college, have you ever felt a lack of clarity? A sense of dread for what you want to do with the rest of your life? Confusion about where you’re supposed to go now? Rather than the pressure of having to go to class, you’re all alone to face the bigger pressure of pursuing your dreams and crushing your fears… at least that’s what we’re told.

What people don’t really talk about, at least in my experience, is that post-grad life can be extremely daunting, especially when there’s no one telling you what to do and how to do it. But actually, that’s the beauty of it. Post graduation can be, if not is, the best time to explore and create yourself. And yea, I said “create”, not “find” yourself. I believe life is about creating your own path and your own identity, instead of fishing around looking for a path that you think you belong on. We must create.

I’ve gone through the struggles of unclarity and lack of motivation plenty of times throughout college and into post-graduation. I’ve found that the best things that can help with it are these 3 steps: explore, trial and error, and patience.

#1 - Explore

The first step of this post-grad planning is to explore. If you have completely no idea what to do or where to start, here’s what I recommend. Grab a sheet of paper and a pencil. We’re going to make an outline to help with planning and research. The first section will be our “Likes and Interests” section.

This space is here for you to write down what you like doing, such as any hobbies or interests you currently have. Some examples could be sports, gaming, cooking, video editing, or talking with people. The second section is to write down your dislikes – what you don’t like doing, things you aren’t really interested in, and wouldn’t consider pursuing as part of a career. Some examples for this include sales-y positions, managing social media, drawing, etc.

You can also include careers and jobs in this section that you wouldn’t want to pursue. The third section we need is what we are potentially interested. Give yourself space to write down things that you are potentially interested in learning more about, such as marketing, coding, or graphic design.

You can pursue these possible interests by starting small, like watching YouTube videos to learn more about these skills, or by paying for online courses like LinkedIn learning, Udemy, or Skillshare. And finally, the last section is for potential careers or volunteer opportunities that would involve a combination of the skills in the 3 previous sections we just wrote out. If you’re not sure what potential jobs are out there, this is the time to research.

Hop onto Google and type in a few of the skills that you wrote down and include the word “career”. If you’re quite passionate in gaming, look up “gaming careers”, and there will be millions of results telling you all about the potential opportunities. Make sure to write down traditional and non-traditional job opportunities too – you might be surprised at what kind of jobs impress you that are not part of the status-quo or ones that you haven’t heard of before.

Once you find a potential job, look at what’s required for most of them and look into how you can gain those skills if you don’t have them already. If it’s a job you want, there’s a lot of research to do, but it’s most definitely worth it. There are so many websites and companies that exist just to match you with potential jobs – you just need get started, and by using this simplified research plan, things will be a lot easier than just spending hours online hoping to find something that might be appealing.

#2 - Trial and error

So the second part of this post-grad planning is trial and error. Hopefully the planning guide helped bring some clarity into the equation, but if not, no need to panic. If you’re getting a little overwhelmed at the number of options, my advice would be to just pick something. When you make a decision, it doesn’t have to be the right one because no matter what, it’ll teach you more about yourself and what you enjoy or don’t enjoy doing. How can you be certain if you don’t try?

That’s the beauty of simply gaining experience. You don’t need to have experience just from sitting in a cubicle filing papers for a year or two. Experience comes from trying out new and different things, and they’ll also give you awesome stories to tell! Try researching some local part-time openings or volunteer opportunities. And trust me, there are a ton that can be done remotely, especially since the pandemic. I’ll include the links in the Resources!

#3 - Patience

The third and final step is to have patience. If you consider yourself to act impatient most of the time, for the love of all things guacamole, sit down and learn habits for PATIENCE or at least try. I think one of the biggest things I constantly work on is having patience with my professional journey.

I used to have a firm belief that I need to make as much money as possible as soon as possible, and didn’t yet realize that things take time. The most important thing to remember for this area of your life, or maybe even any area of life, is that things that have worth and give you true fulfillment, take time.

You’re not gonna grow a whole tree in one day. You plant the seed, you water it every day, you nourish it, and you keep going and waiting, and have patience for it to bloom. Just like a tree, you are constantly growing and improving, so be kind to yourself and practice patience. Anything worthwhile takes time, including you.

One last tip, having structure for anything and maintaining a guide or a routine helps so much. It serves you as a guide and what steps to take next every day. By starting out with that planning sheet I discussed earlier, I am 100% confident that you have the abilities to create structure in your own life, by exploring things, trial and error, and by practicing patience.

I. Believe. In you.

Suzanne <3