Life after college: how to find your own compass (when everyone tells you not to)

First drafted: 2017 July 29
Last updated: 2017 July 29

Right after graduating from college everybody seems to be up for the world. Fearlessly looking for whatever opportunity might come about that would make the effort worthwhile.

We feel full of energy, almost blindfolded by a deep-rooted sense of ownership after having worked hard for the last four, five, six years and totally committed to make of the world a better place. At least, I sure felt that way.

However, for most, life doesn't change that much

At some point between the Homeric narrative of our academic accomplishment and the present, we find ourselves devoting eight hours a day five days a week to a dreary job, having to deal with house bills and a never-ending mortgage, while we spend the weekends raking leaves out of the porch and watching Game of Thrones. This all happens before realizing that it is, and has always been, up to us to make our life the way we want at every moment.

So I wonder —what is it that make us change that promising envision of our own future for the latter?

Off-target advice

I have come to realize that too often we choose the path that is predetermined, or even worse, expected for us to choose. Our environment (our family, friends, and the perception that we want others to have of ourselves) dictates, in most cases, the boundaries of our own decision making process. The outcome of such a restrained process defines the easiest, often less frightening, roads of shoulds. Braking those walls and forcing yourself to look at the bigger picture never comes with ease.

Somewhere down the road we were told that our professional career should be the driving force of our decisions. Searching for the professional upside almost in every decision we make has become the common practice. Only a fool would make a decision on his twenties that does not imply an opportunity to get a better job, get promoted, or get that raise that would allow him to buy that thing he always wanted, right?

By travelling the world I have come to realize that by doing the opposite, that is to diminish the professional upside and at the same time undervalue the effects of your life decisions on your professional career, I have allowed myself the opportunity to live the most personal, emotional, and professionally beneficial experiences.

I have lived in amazing places, met incredible people, done the unimaginable and tried the unexpected. I have learned and I have grown. I am more self-aware than ever as I keep learning who I am, what I like, and what I'm good at. I have talked to and met so many people over these years: people running big companies, people working for these companies, people with great plans and ideas, and people with doubts and fear of the future. Through many conversations I have developed empathy for the unfortunate, admiration for the ordinary, and care for the miserable.

But let's be honest. I am not in a position to tell you what to do, nor am I anyone from whom to take advice as I'm far from figuring life out myself, but I can tell you what I've done so far and leave it up to you whether or not to give it a try.

I have simply allowed myself enough time to ask a few basic questions and not to be afraid of the answers. Questions like: who do I want to become? Where and how do I want to live? What do I want to do, experience, learn, or create? Is this the life I want to live? If not, what is it? What parameters and values define my good life? Who is actually living this life and what he or she is doing or has done before? And who is living the life I want to avoid and what he or she is doing or has done before?

In the end is just a matter of hitting the brakes on this frenetic life we all live in, raising the view and looking at it from the point the view of an outsider. Assess yourself as you do with others, allowing yourself enough time to realize what is that you want to accomplish. Think of what you would like to be doing compare to what you have done for the last three days, and how you want the story of your life to be told. But the most important thing is not to ponder forever and go write that story, learn, experience, be curious, build new relationships, try new things, fail, struggle, work, improve, be happy and be sad, be active, be ambitious, and above all, be present. What questions you ask to yourself is always up to you, but keep in mind that there is no absolute answer, and that is exactly the beauty behind it. Just as yourself, the answers to those questions are always changing, evolving, improving, and growing.

Once you realize this, you will understand that by seeking for a professional upside on every decision you make, you are dooming yourself to the path of fail expectations and limited opportunities.

Right after college is the perfect time for you to define your own questions and find those meaningful answers that will help you make the best possible decisions to shape out your life by your terms. It is at that specific moment in time when we find ourselves in front of a white canvas and it is up to us how to fill it up. By doing so you will instantly begin to think on totally different terms, you will reorganize your personal list of priorities placing your professional career not at the top but the place is should be (for some it will definitely be at the top). Forget about the effect that your decisions will have on your career. There is no single ladder that you should climb off to be successful. If there was one, the sheep would always follow the shepherd, and this does not seem to be the case.

By undervaluing the effect of your decisions has over your career path, by placing your professional career within the grasp of your personal priorities, you will allow yourself to live experiences that only come from a stage in your life where there is little at stake, risks are even negligible, and the benefit is high. From someone who has lived in five different countries during the three years after graduating, I can tell you that no professional experience will teach you more or provide you more personal benefit that the experience of seeking your callings, living by your own decision, and from you own work.

I truly believe that college makes us more ready than ever for whatever life has to offer. It makes you an opportunity seeker, and if you don't hold onto external expectations, it also makes you an opportunity maker. It is the perfect time because in your twenties you are not in need for a lot things. You can make a good living off a scholarship, you can live almost everywhere, eat almost anything, and find fulfilment on the mundane. Your attitude is over the top and your needs and requirements are low.

Your attitude is over the top and your needs are low. The stakes are high and the risks are extremely low. Make this your main asset.

And I can tell you already that most people won't understand the whys behind your decisions. Most people expect professional reasons to be behind major life decisions, and while there could be some, they shouldn't be the primary driving force of what you decide to do and how you decide to spend your time right after college. You will see friends taking their "dreamed" jobs, building a family, having kids, taking on loans to buy houses, while your are living in a 20 m2 study in a small town in the middle of nowhere using 2nd hand clothes and living off a scholarship while making some extra money teaching kids how to play guitar. And you wouldn't have it any other way.

I can assure you that other's expectations is what maker your decision making process fail from the very beginning. We tend to give others way too much credit. The lack of self-awareness, or in other terms, having a clear understanding of your life values and priorities, is the Aquiles' heel of most recent graduates. It is hard to put in words what you learn and the person you become when you share the experiences you live with people from cultures and places other than your own.

Allow me to end this post by going slightly off topic here and getting a bit deeper into the roots of the problem. In my opinion, after college our efforts are oriented towards a wall made up of mistaken ideas about the things that are really important in life. We are told that we should spend our time and energy on building our careers, that our decisions are crucial and irreversible, that we should seek our calling as if it was something absolute and singular, that you should choose carefully which companies to work for, that you should build a perfect resume where every word matters, and a lot of other nonsensical advice that you are better off not listening to. All of which is, in my opinion, nothing else but the byproduct of an ineffectual system. A system that has not being able to adapt to the needs and requirements of today's world. A system where heterogeneity, creativity, and innovation are not fostered, where the disruptive thinking is not embraced, is today, more than ever, a failed system. My experience after many years in academia, and a few more that are to come, has proven to me that these aspects haven't yet being introduced in today's education system which makes it fall behind.

“Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before” Joseph Campbell.”

D.R-M

Note i: This article was originally writen during my time living in Sendai, Japan, and first published in my former site theforeigner.blog.

Note ii: These opinions are my own. They are also highly dynamic and their second time derivative, albeit decreasing with age, is large. Experience provides me with new insights that drift former convictions. By the time you read this, assume my opinion on the subject has most likely changed.