“It will be the best years of your life,” is often how people foreshadow your experience as undergraduates at university or college. In actual fact, it’s a multi-faceted experience. It is filled with highs and lows and is by no means the absolute best experience of your life. Parties and new friends coupled with your first brush of daily freedom are exhilarating. But, they’re nothing compared to the adventures you will have after. By deeming this as the time of your life, it leaves little expectation for the future.
9-5 abyss…
The fear after graduation is that we will end up in bureaucratic jobs. That we float through the 9-5 abyss while losing our individual dreams. Yet, post-grad life is an opportunity. To take what you learned about yourself at university and apply it to who you want to be outside of it.
After all, that is why university is considered the best time of our lives. We are able to be who we want to be on a daily basis. Stepping out of that sacred campus bubble and stumbling into the ‘real world’ is strange. It may feel like everything is downhill from here onwards. You have to face situations where your age group does not surround you. You have to have the courage to be who you are, to stand out.
Journey into the world
University was precious because it had a time limit, it had to stop sometime. By embracing this change in all its tragic glory, you will learn to stop seeing your undergraduate life and postgraduate existence as individual experiences. Instead you’ll start to see them as part of a single journey you are on.
Frankly, I hope that my postgraduate life eclipses my time at university. I find the next step to be scary but I’ve seen so many others move forward to be even happier, so I choose to see hope. I choose to see it as the chance to decipher what career path you want, to travel with purpose, to start anew if necessary and to share a piece of yourself with the world. If we do not give back to the world by entering it full bodied, university will inevitably be remembered as the “best years,” and the future doesn’t stand a chance with this attitude.
Just remember, we are living in a time of fearless women. Be the woman that you want to be when you look at yourself in the mirror. We are guaranteed to live life with one body and soul, so time isn’t to be wasted by wishing we could go back to dorm rooms and frat parties.
In fear of preaching to the choir too much, the best years of your life are the ones you create. So, what are you waiting for?
