Reflections From Our Aftergrad Journey
2 Years Later
AFTERGRAD is an interdisciplinary multimedia experience designed by Robert Cain and Victoria Gilbert. It’s a digital newsletter, a biweekly podcast, and a networked community of students, recent grads, and industry professionals. Its purpose is to share knowledge, insight, and perspective on the transition from academic settings into the real world.
It’s been almost two years since we introduced The Aftergrad Podcast to the world. November 7, 2021, is the day we released the show’s first trailer after brainstorming the concept right after graduating from college and planning what would be our next steps as recent grads.
The quality of this episode was piss poor. Not because it sounded like we shouldn’t be hosting a podcast, but because we later realized that our mics weren’t actually on. It wasn’t until our third recording when we learned how to power on the devices we purchased from Amazon for $40.
At the time, we were living in DC as roommates pursuing a common goal of finding clarity and security in the postgrad moment. This decision to embark on what we call the aftergrad journey as creative partners occurred after we took a short, much-needed, postgrad vacation to Tulum. It’s interesting to think about how much we’ve changed since then. How much we’ve grown into ourselves. The first few months after graduating felt blissful and euphoric, similar to college orientation when you’re meeting classmates for the first time, learning the names of buildings, and coming to terms with what will be your new home for the next four years or so. There’s this period of brief ignorance that defines moments like these when we’re making a transition into what feels like an unknown space.
Indeed, ignorance is, in fact, bliss.
It’s this personal lack of awareness about the nuances of adulthood and postgrad life that led us down this journey in the first place. To document our thoughts and observations in order to spark deeper conversations about this stage of life. This way future graduates won’t feel as shocked as we were, even though a little uncertainty is a good sparring partner for building spiritual fortitude.
These ideas guided the first two seasons of The Aftergrad Podcast in which we unpacked a wide range of topics from cultural trends like lucky girl syndrome and being delusional to relevant news headlines like quiet quitting and the declining value of a college degree. The platform has become a means for us to somehow construct a postgrad time capsule of important ideas, express our emotions through personal anecdotes, and hear from fellow aftergrads such as yourself.
Of course, the experiences we talk about are not unique to us, which is why we invite you to join us as we hike into our third season. When attempting hard things, it’s always better to do so with the help of a supportive community. It’s what we found in each other during a time of chaos and confusion. And now, we want to seriously expand the perspective of this small community. This was always the goal: less about us, and more about how the term “aftergrad” represents something universal. We’re grateful for people like Kelly Williams Brown and Elizabeth Ann Gilbert who have shared their experiences with us. And for the fellow aftergrads who agreed to let us spotlight them via our Instagram.
We’ll be doing more of this work in the future. And a new interview series via the newsletter will be released soon. In addition to the podcast, we’re excited to share more research, essays, and opinions in our Postgrad Diary, but not just our words. If you’ve written something about your postgrad experience or would like to write something on an aspect of adulthood you feel strongly about – among many other possible angles – we’d love to feature it.
As an alternative, we’d love to respond to you via our Dear Aftergrad advice column where we offer our two cents to readers and listeners who submit their questions or dilemmas to the Dear Aftergrad Submission Form. We’ve published three of these columns so far with the help of our friends who took the time to submit thoughtful letters.
Again, it takes a community. Nothing is self-made.
With this in mind, we’re curious to hear how you’re navigating postgrad life. What are you working on? Who are you working for? What are you struggling with? What are you fighting for? Everyone’s journey is different. We started a podcast to search for answers to these questions. But this is only a short chapter of the story we’re trying to tell.
Subscribe to The Aftergrad Newsletter for free to receive these updates, advice columns from Dear Aftergrad, essays on Postgrad Diary, and much more directly in your inbox. Thanks for being here.
Until next time,
Your fellow aftergrads, Robert & Victoria