*this is a continuation on a post I wrote to a colleague on LinkedIn:
I just wanted to share my own personal story upon graduating. I wanted to preface this: what I might say next might be slightly skewed because of our Covid-stricken world. As if finding a job as a new graduate isn’t hard enough, it is even harder now. I cannot deny that some graduates do not have the privilege of experiencing the following experience that I am lucky enough to experience. I was very fortunate and lucky to have found a job in June of 2020 when I graduated university and have been working for the same company since then. While I am so blessed to have been able to find a job, and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunities it has given me, I underestimated the amount of work and energy it is to maintain and work a full time job. As for my thoughts on young graduates joining the workforce, I definitely feel that many young and highly driven graduates today feel almost as if finding a job is a rat-race. I cannot deny I didn’t feel the same way a year ago. Societal and social media definitely ingrains that in our minds that it’s important to start our careers right away, but after being in the working industry for a year now, I don’t believe young graduates should feel this way. I look back in my university years and truly wish I had taken my time. University years are a great experience to learn more about yourself and interests..we have our whole lives to figure out what we want to do. It is ok if we want to take our time to find a career because we will work for the rest of our lives. Like, literally the rest of our lives. Taking 1 year out of the 80 years we will live for a break is really something you gotta think about in relation! The first few years are not critical to your lifetime success as long as you give yourself the time and the path you need for your own individual self. I have come to realize within the past year that as long as you strive for your goals and work towards them, you will get there. Don’t feel bad.
As for my personal experience with full time work, I have found now that at my job, when I want to take time off, I can’t help but feel shameful about it. This is even when I need time for doctors appointments or errands that I need to run that I simply can’t do on weekends. It was a great wakeup call for me. Even having PTO or vacation time, didn’t allow me to feel justified leaving work. I did not have any one at work tell me the benefits I have for missing work so I never did. I can for sure say this all greatly hurt my mental health because I felt trapped despite having a team and a manager that supported me greatly. I know for a fact, many other individuals who work full-time jobs in corporations might feel this way. The idea you might get shunned just because you need to take a few days off for mental health reasons. Even my boss, whose mother has cancer, won’t even take vacation time because there are tasks that are needed and there is no time for vacation. Sometimes I wish when I look back before I graduated that I did not rush myself to find a job. If I could go back, I would have at least allowed myself a couple months break before beginning my lifelong career. But I do not regret anything.
Now that a lot of old classmates have graduated and are looking for work, I have come to realize my experience is incredibly individual. A lot of them, who I see as highly intelligent, hard working, and clever, are unable to find jobs and I have definitely been in the outlier. I feel upset at myself sometimes that I made myself think I was behind compared to my peers when that simply was not the case. Sometime through the year, I really wished I could just leave my job and take some time off, go travel to that place I had wanted to go to. And at some points, I almost feel like missed my chance…and I am only 22 years old. I remember reading a Reddit thread recently about a program where they provide participants housing and meals as long as you provide them your part-time labour which can allow you to live around the UK and travel. I saw a lot of the comments on the thread from middle-aged people saying if they can go back in time and do this, they would. Something that I try to live by is not allowing life to pass you by. Take care of yourself but take advantage of life. Use other people’s experience and knowledge as something that you can apply to your own life, especially if it is an opinion with the greater group of people. I’d say given the next opportunity, I would love to take some time off and learn, travel and be by myself to learn more about who I am intrinsically without the stress of being a student in a highly competitive and quantitative world. And remember, don’t be too hard on yourself if this doesn’t work out either. Life isn’t perfect and we are not as well. One day you might even end up on the same level as someone you thought you would never be able to compare to..as long as you give yourself the time and allowance to understand growth is not parallel to anyone else. Seemingly “head starts” in the long run, won’t impact you and your own success. Take the chances that you feel is right, and if there is something else you want to do, there will be a time and place for it.
I definitely think if you want to take a gap year, you should because you might not be able to do it once you start working, which is a realization I had to learn from experience. And if you haven’t found a job, don’t sweat. Use this time to think about yourself instead of dwelling in your feelings and use it to learn about you, travel, do things you never had the chance to in college. Take a chill part-time work job so you can pursue passions that you might not have time for later on. You still have your learning student identity, there is just way more freedom to pursue what actually interests you rather than the strict borders of university requirements.
Here is an Instagram post I wanted to share with you all today because I felt a similar way for a long time. This post was written by a singer about what it truly means to be in the moment that I hope all people can one day achieve and realize on their own terms of the beauty of life:
I’ve been reflecting a lot on different versions of myself at different ages. Thinking about how so much of my life has been marked by this longing, this feeling that I’m not enough, and that I should be doing/being more. I get down on myself a lot for ever “wasting time,” whether that be mindlessly scrolling social media, or watching YouTube videos for way longer than I planned to. In my mind there’s this ideal version of me, who always does things I deem “productive,” such as reading, writing, praying, spending time with friends and family, exercising or being creative. And while I do love those things, and they bring me a lot of joy and fruit in my life, the pressure I put on myself to be doing only those things at all times can feel crushing. I remember when I reached the age of 25 and I had this jarring quarter-life crisis. I felt like I wasn’t at all where I wanted to be: I wanted to be deeply in love and almost married to my soulmate (married at 26 was the plan I set for myself at age 17. Yet when I turned 25, I was completely single and had just had my heart badly broken.) I also wanted to be a published author. Yet I was single, and had never put a book together, even after writing hundreds of poems, journal entries, and essays in my life. I felt like I was just wasting my time, and that felt terrifying. That was three years ago. I look back at that time in my early to mid twenties so differently now. I see many beautiful poems written. Deep conversations with cherished friends. Night walks, early morning walks. Dinners with my family and birthdays, going around the table saying what we love about each other. Prayers and conversations with God that made me weep with joy. Deep sorrow that hurt, but made me feel so human, so alive. None of it was wasted. It was beautiful, and the life I had lived was so meaningful and precious. I wish I could go back, and tell myself that, so the younger me could appreciate each moment, rather than comparing where she was to where she wanted to be.
With love,
Cindy.
therewillbebread 