With just over a month left before graduation, many students have their future plans all laid out. From $50,000-a-year engineering jobs straight out of college, to law school, medical school and inner-city teaching positions, the Class of 2005 has hundreds of bright young men and women moving on to do great things. But there are those who are graduating in May with no more of a career plan than they had in elementary school, except that they have ruled out being a fireman or an astronaut. I am in the latter group.
For us undecided students, this can be somewhat of a stressful time. Our degrees in English, Studio Arts or a foreign language, while being of great interest to us, are not of great interest to people who write big paychecks. There are no set paths to follow once we get out of school, and so we start with a blank slate on May 15. It can be pretty scary.
But it can also be quite exciting and liberating to
say the least.
We’re not tied down to any particular job or calling, and although the next few months may be full of uncertainty, there is some comfort in knowing that eventually, we will all figure something out. Perhaps we’ll travel the world, move to California to find ourselves or maybe jump from job to job until we find one that we like. In the worst case scenario, we can always live at home and get jobs bagging groceries, even though it may not be particularly glamorous.
In today’s society, it’s much harder to be one of the undecided. Everyone around you seems to have it all figured out. Everyone around you is discussing what they are going to be doing with their first million, which, according to their agenda
they should have by next Christmas, or New Year’s Day at the very latest.
But we’re young, and things change. Any student who says that when they entered college they were exactly the same person with all of the same goals as they have now, is lying.
Just think about where we were four years ago as freshmen, and, before that, as high school freshmen. We’ve come a long way in those eight years.
I, personally, take great comfort in knowing that both my parents were in my position coming out of college. My father, a farm boy from Iowa, taught in an all-black school in Alabama for two years before figuring out he wanted to go to law school. My mother got a graduate degree in City Planning before becoming a non-profit manager. What we’ve studied shouldn’t be a limiting factor in our job search, but rather it should be extra support for whatever we do wind up doing with our lives.
So, as graduation draws closer, I am a little nervous. Yes, my future is certainly up in the air, but I take comfort in knowing that I am not alone and also in knowing that life will not end. But most of all, I’m excited that in a few weeks, I’ll never have to eat at the Pit again.
Voigt can be reached at svoigt@campustimes.org.
