The end of last month marked one year since I graduated and this month is my one year anniversary of working at IBM. I sound like a broken record because I keep reiterating how unbelievably fast the time passed and it’s so. darn. true. As I’m inclined to do, I’ve been evaluating what has happened over the course of the year, what I’ve accomplished, and what I’ve learned. Today I’m going to share with you my main takeaways one year out of school, in the place called “the real world.”
Your goals will change
There have been many posts on the blog about how to achieve your goals (check some out here, here, and here), but I’ve never talked about what to do when your goals change. And that’s because I’ve mostly been consistent with setting good goals for myself that I want to achieve, and am able to make a reality. However, one major goal I set for myself to achieve 6 months post-graduation was to move out on my own…and I haven’t done that yet, nor do I have intentions of going anytime soon.
Alyssa on graduation day would have been shocked and guess that something terrible must have happened to prevent me from moving out (was I fired? is someone sick?), but nope, I just learned about what life actually looks like full time and the reality of costs and changed my intentions accordingly. When you make aspirational goals before entering a certain life stage, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll change your mind once you get more information. And there’s nothing wrong with that!
I’ve learned to give myself a break and to accept that what I envision is not always going to be the best for me. Rather than holding on to goals and making them set in stone, I’m working on going with the flow and understanding that my decision making will get better as I gather more information.
Your relationships will change
A few months ago I wrote a post about how to stay close with your friends post-grad. When I was graduating, I knew that things would change, but I didn’t know how infrequently I would end up seeing everyone. At first I was resistant and wanted to replicate at least some of the consistency of hanging out, but with different schedules and priorities there was no way I could. Now I’ve had to shift my mindset and instead appreciate the time that we do have together in person and make an effort to keep in touch electronically in between.
Something that I do want to work on is making new friends, because although I’ve started to get to know some new people, I can do more to grow those relationships. Pushing yourself to not just stay comfortable in existing friendships, but to expand your circle is rewarding and a healthy part of growing outside of college.
You need patience
As you probably picked up on, the key themes here are change is cool, you have to embrace new experiences, and please, I beg you, give yourself grace when you aren’t the master at something instantly.
What have you learned your first year post-grad? If you’ve just graduated, what are you most nervous about?
Leave a Reply