Saw this on time.com blog and decided to share with my blog readers. If you’re a recent graduate, you have lots of reasons to be cheerful. For a start, you have walked across stage, balancing a board on your head while wearing a trip-hazard, as ceremony demands. Degree in hand, you’re ready to embark on your post-university life. Below are 21 things you should know after graduation from high institution.
1. The real world is more
fun than grumpy adults have ever told you.
Don’t listen to people in
their 40s who act like the best part of your life ends the minute you get your
diploma. Is the real world all cotton candy and unicorn rides? No. But
sometimes, misery loves company and recruits it too. When you start a new job
there will inevitably be a group of people there who don’t like their job and
don’t like being an adult. Avoid these people like the plague. They’ve bought
into the cultural lie that a “job is just a job” and that you should only work
for the weekend. Nonsense. Your job can be meaningful. Your weekdays can
matter.
2. One of your friends will
be instantly successful.
They will move to New
York or San Francisco and make finding a great job seem easy. They will earn
the kind of money that allows you to pay for your own HBOGo pass instead of
stealing your parents’. You will hate them at least a little bit because
watching their meteoric rise through the filtered window of social media will
make you feel like it will never happen for you. Don’t get caught in the trap
of comparison.
3. Your first job might not
involve your major in a major way.
That’s only a minor
problem though. You have 40 years to reunite your job with your major — or to
find out your major may not have major bearing on what you do in life.
4. Your 20s are lonelier
than you think they’ll be.
They’re glamorized in
culture, presented as the time of your life. As you bingewatch an entire season
of House of Cards on Netflix, you will wonder, Is every other person my age at
an amazing party right now that I didn’t know about? They’re not. The truth is,
when you leave college, you leave the tightest, largest concentration of people
who are your age. Suddenly, you’re scattered around the country and community
won’t involve walking out onto the quad. You’ll have to fight for it. That’s
not failure, that’s reality. Seek it out. It’s not easy to make friends as an
adult but it’s definitely possible if you’ll be brave.
5. Being an adult comes with
an obscene amount of paperwork.
Stay on top of it. Taxes,
401K enrollment, healthcare, apartment contracts… Prepare to be awash in forms
that make the Apple iTunes agreement seem pleasant. Don’t ignore the paperwork.
I once did and assumed the company I worked for would handle a healthcare issue
I had. (I thought I had kidney stones; turns out it was just an ultimate
Frisbee injury. What an adult I was!) I threw the paperwork in the trash. I
didn’t think anything of it until years later when a collection agency came
after me for $81 and my credit was garbage.
6. Your generation gets
unfairly labeled for entitlement. Don’t accept that.
Be humble at work. Show
up with questions and a willingness to learn. Don’t act like you know
everything already. You don’t, but you know what? Neither do we. People my age
and the generations older than I am are a little afraid of you sometimes. We’re
scared of the technologies you might know about that we’ve never even heard of.
We don’t want to look dumb when we ask, “What is YikYak?” The truth is, we need
you, just like you need us.
7. Pay attention in
meetings.
Roughly 93% of your job
depends on your ability to do this. You might have been able to tune out in a
class of 400 people for an hour but if you try that in a meeting at work,
people are going to notice. Don’t text under the table with your phone either.
We can see you.
8. Treat email like it
matters.
The other 7% of your job
will be managing email. You have to communicate clearly in your emails.
You need to respond to your managers and coworkers quickly. You need to stay
out of stupid passive-aggressive traps, like CCing someone’s superior, as a
veiled threat. Work your inbox like it’s your job. Because it is.
9. Take risks.
You don’t have mortgages
or kids or other responsibilities yet. Want to go abroad for a year and make a
micro-salary teaching English? Want to start a business specializing in a
heritage breed of rabbits for hipsters who are tired of suburban chickens
already? Go for it. What’s the worst that can happen? You try it for a year, it
fails and now you’re 23. You’ve got the rest of your life to play it safe.
10. Don’t put off your
college loans.
The 9,000-pound
elephant/gorilla/large scary animal in the corner is your student loans. Sallie
Mae doesn’t mess around. Ignoring that you owe money doesn’t make the loans go
away. Paying them back does.
11. Hold your money with an
open hand.
Money is a something that
pretends to be an Everything. It’s perfectly fine to take a job for a few years
just to pay the bills and get by. There’s nobility in that. As your career
progresses though, be careful that you don’t chase money at the exclusion of
everything else. The amount of cash that will make you perfectly happy is
always a “little more.” It’s a never-ending chase that has hollowed out many a
40-year-old.
12. If you move home, make
sure you bring an exit strategy with you.
Pay rent to your parents.
Do your own laundry. Buy your own food. Have a deadline for how long you’re
going to stay there. Home is comfortable but the distance between comfortable
and complacent is surprisingly short. Just because you’re sleeping in the same
room you had in middle school doesn’t mean you have to act like an adolescent.
And if anyone tries to make you feel ashamed to be living at home with your
parents, don’t listen to them.
13. Don’t spend all your time
with idiots and then wonder why it’s hard to meet someone great to date.
If you moved to the
desert and then told me the kayaking there is terrible, I would agree. Then I’d
ask why you expected sand dunes to offer optimal water sports. “Become the kind
of person you want to be with” might be clichéd advice best suited to Hallmark
cards, but “Go where the people you want to be like are” isn’t.
14. Don’t ask to work from
home the first week of your new job.
Though more companies are
offering that option, it’s still a privilege, not a right.
15. Jump into the wild west
of side jobs.
The days of having the
same job for 40 years and then getting a gold watch when you retire are over.
Hooray! Your job won’t be limited or defined by geography. The Internet has
leveled the playing field. Anyone can connect with anyone. You don’t need a physical
storefront or even a physical product to start a business. Your ability to make
money will only be limited by your ability to hustle.
16. Figure out which part of
your career needs the most work.
The best careers and
biggest adventures are determined by our ability to invest in four distinct
things: Relationships, Skills, Character and Hustle.
17. Don’t become a dinosaur.
Just because your formal
education might have ended doesn’t mean you should stop learning. If you don’t
keep old skills sharp and continue learning new ones your career will become
obsolete.
18. Don’t burn many bridges.
Every industry is smaller
than you think. Do your best to leave as many relationships intact at every job
you have. Chances are, you’ll work with a lot of the same people again during
your career.
19. Put your phone down when you’re
talking to someone.
Nothing says “this job
doesn’t matter to me” like staring into your phone when you’re having a
face-to-face conversation with a co-worker. Want a simple way to build the kind
of character that will serve you for a lifetime? Ignore your phone instead of
the people you’re with.
20. Remember, it’s all an audition.
I am one of seven people
in America who have not seen the musical “Hamilton.” Despite that fact, I do
know a thing or two about the audition process. That’s because full-time jobs
are getting harder to find as more companies lean on the contract model.
They’ll hire you on a part-time basis or even as a full-time contractor, but
won’t jump into a long-term relationship without testing you out first. That’s
not failure, that’s the future. Treat it like an audition. You might feel like
just an understudy stuck backstage, but you’re not. You’re proving to that
company you have what it takes to earn a leading role. Don’t have a “full time
job or nothing” attitude when it comes to your job search. Today’s job market
demands flexibility, hustle and occasionally tap dancing.
21. Drake was right.
You are going to start at
the bottom. That’s OK. Put your pride aside and recognize this as a starting
point. This isn’t your final job, it’s your first job. You’ve got one foot on
the ladder and now you get to climb it. Give yourself time and be patient.
Welcome to the real
world, where people who are almost 40 reference Drake in a thinly veiled
attempt to seem hip. I’m not. I need you to teach me about what’s coming next.
So does everyone else.
Congratulations on
finishing college.
Congratulations on
joining the real world.
We’ve been waiting for
you.
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