Dear Aftergrad is an advice column for recent grads and young professionals on work, careers, and adulting — from us and fellow aftergrads. Got a crazy confession about adulting? Looking for advice on navigating postgrad life? Let us offer you our two cents. Submit your stories, questions, or dilemmas via our Dear Aftergrad Submission Form for a chance to have them featured in a future episode or newsletter. You can also DM us on Instagram, write us an email at theaftergradpodcast@gmail.com, or comment on this post.
Dear Aftergrad,
I’m a little stressed about the transition from high school to college. I’m a high school senior preparing to go to college (either Prairie View or Texas State) after graduating in May 2023, and it feels like I need to have everything together. Things like my career, relationships, and ideal lifestyle. I just don’t know yet, but I feel pressured to have answers to these questions.
Signed,
Khalid
Hey there, Khalid!
Congratulations! You’re almost done with high school. Decision day is quickly approaching. And you’re so close to beginning the next chapter in your life. This is an exciting time, but it can also be filled with a lot of anxiety, dread, and uncertainty.
It’s totally okay to be a little stressed about this transition — the one from high school to college. As you’ll soon realize, as adults, we’re constantly embarking on transitions because even when we follow predefined paths, our realities continue to shift in unpredictable ways. We experienced this in a dramatic sense with the pandemic, but it has always been true since the dawn of time — and now more than ever with the ways in which technology is disrupting work, education, and other cultural spheres. Our responsibility as young adults and professionals will be to remain as prepared as humanly possible for the inevitable transitions life will continue to throw at us, using any and every resource at our disposal.
The good news is that you’re off to a great start. You’ve taken ownership of your education by narrowing down your college search to 2 schools. Sometimes, we can become indecisive when making life-altering decisions, especially when we give ourselves too many options to choose from. In a study often referenced as The Jam Experiment published in 2000, psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper from Columbia and Stanford University found that too many choices can actually overwhelm consumers, leaving them unable to make a decision on which product they wish to purchase.
A similar outcome can occur when we overwhelm our personal futures with too many possibilities. We become paralyzed by choice. Concerning ourselves unnecessarily with each and every “what if” and attempting to factor for failure is a recipe for mental instability. It’s important for us to fully commit to our selections once we’ve made them without second-guessing the intuition which led us there in the first place. Live in your choices. Move in if you must. And whatever you do, make the best of them.
According to Bill Burnett, Executive Director of the Design Program at Stanford, when we make a choice reversible, then our chances of being happy with the choice decrease by 60 to 70 percent. He shared these words in his TedTalk on designing the life you want. In other words, don’t purposefully create an opportunity to opt out of your choice because you’re concerned about not liking it.
This is not to say we should never change our minds. In fact, this happens all the time. If you haven’t changed your mind at some point — now or in the future — then you’re probably not as open-minded or socially aware as you could be. No one will ever have all the answers. That’s what makes life so tricky. We’re constantly tasked with making decisions without ever knowing how the future will unfold.
However, regardless of whether or not we make the right choice, the beautiful thing about making a choice is that new knowledge and opportunities reveal themselves as a result, allowing us to continuously make more informed choices in the future — thanks to lived experience.
Despite this fact, the pressure to have answers, no matter how few, is real. As you continue to navigate school and life, interrogate where these pressures are coming from. Are they coming from your parents? Social media? Peers? Or are they strictly internal? Maybe it’s a combination of these influences. But one thing is clear: you’re not alone in these feelings.
Attending college, regardless of which school you choose, will situate you within a community of scholars, thinkers, and doers where everyone is searching for answers to big questions surrounding careers, relationships, and ideal lifestyles. This environment will be rewarding and challenging at times. And perhaps the reason you still don’t have as much clarity as you feel pressured to have on these matters is that you haven’t yet been forced beyond the liminality of senior year and college decisions.
Submitting your last paper, turning in your final exams, and completing your group assignments will feel exhilarating as you race to the finish line of high school graduation. We couldn’t wait to get out of there. Good riddance. Nevertheless, don’t rush these moments — nor the time between graduation and orientation. A lot can be discovered about yourself and your desires in the months leading up to your departure for college. Listen to the universe and your inner voice as you take this next step. Still ask questions. And then ask more questions. And don’t forget to have fun.
Long story short, we’re still to this day searching for our own answers to these questions. And we’re 23. The older we get, the more we realize that we never really receive the answers we were searching for. Instead, life dictates to us what the answer will be, and we must respond accordingly. The moral of the story is this: be patient. Incredible things come to those who wait. In your case, it’ll be clarity in the fact that the pressure you’re experiencing now was life’s way of preparing you for your destiny.
With love and high hopes for your future,
Your Fellow Aftergrads, Robert and Victoria