Lifestyle

Metamorphosis – Post-Graduation Blues

When I packed up all of my belongings and tried to squeeze them into the back of my parents’ car, just before the beginning of first year, I didn’t consider what it would be like to leave university. Three years seemed like forever, let alone the four years that some students opted for. “The best years of your life!”, people exclaimed whenever I said I was going. “You’ll have an amazing time.” and they were right: university was great fun- a heady mix of good times and bad decisions. But in the time between that spent in lectures and that spent in nightclubs, nobody warned me about Post Graduation Blues. They should have. Believe me, once the graduation caps have been sent back to the place they were rented from, the pictures hung and the certificates filed, suddenly there’s nothing left to look forward to and that can be quite a shock to the system.

Graduation blues

If PGB, as we shall now refer to it, was a recognised medical condition it would be described as having symptoms including: a loss of purpose, an inability to rise before lunch and an overwhelming desire to talk to anyone within earshot about great university moments. It would also warn that sufferers may lose all memory of university’s less pleasant moments, including the all-night essay writing sessions, and the week they lived off nothing but baked beans because their student loan ran out just before the end of term. Doctors would advise potential sufferers to avoid any events that may trigger it such as reunions, recommend all stay away from grandiose Graduation ceremonies, and also suggest that those who have been diagnosed with the condition may also be susceptible to similar conditions including Post-Wedding Blues.

The catharsis that comes after such a life changing event is difficult to explain. While as a final year student you may feel excited to start your new life, the reality of graduating is that you can feel like you are stuck in limbo. It can feel like the worst thing in the world, a strange loathing and jealousy for your former happier student self and an angry fear towards the unknown of the future. Casualties of PGB can be almost disabled by their new status, making them unbearable for others to be around.

Post-Graduation Blues is a unique phenomenon, because it is self-inflicted, dished out by an unforgiving conscience to all of the recently graduated who are still unclear (God Forbid!) as to what they want to do with their lives, having well and truly lost the familiarity of student status. If left to its own devices it can leave sufferers unable to fulfil their true potential, but this doesn’t have to be the case.  While leaving uni can be a scary and uncertain time, it is important that you take stock and realise you will never again be in such a position to define your own destiny. If all you have ever wanted to do is to go travelling- now is the time. Or perhaps you dream of pursuing a career that others have always said was impossible. Well, at this point in your life you are young, motivated and passionate, and more importantly aren’t tied to a job you don’t want by a mortgage!

Change will always be an inevitable part of life, but what you choose to make of it is entirely up to you. To all graduates, I say lose the self-pity and instead take the Carpe Diem approach, or as we, the ‘yoof’ might say: ‘YOLO’.

 

8 Comments
To Top