When you wake up the day after your graduation, you still have that glow. Not because you drank from your last keg to celebrate (as I fell asleep after graduation to recuperate from my senior week of debauchery) but because you're still getting flooded the picture notifications, congratulations, and even the prospect of more card$.
You have money to blow on a bag that bag online that was just way too much. Now, get the wallet too.
You have an excuse to go out and get belligerent from the flood of free drinks at the bar just for saying "I graduated college."
You are free to plan trips to the beach, to Six Flags, to fucking DISNEY WORLD because you don't have any assignments due anymore!
But then, slowly but surely, family and friends begin reminding you why your'e here in the first place. I'm talking about the dreaded question: "So now what?"
And the glow starts to feel more like a red hot flame on your face when you have to admit: "I don't know."
My advice, as a fellow currently unemployed undergraduate is that you don't have to know. Success stories, as we all know, are those that don't run smoothly and are met with a lot of defeat along the way and blah blah blahhdeh blah...
But stay focused. It's okay to celebrate another friend who got their job lined up but don't meet them everyday for happy hour because now you're just making their success story richer and yours farther away (because you know there will never be a much poorer time than now).
6 MONTHS. That's the golden window. Don't let anyone worry you, you're gonna worry enough yourself. But all the worrying I've been doing for the past semester suddenly vanished a week after graduation. I know I don't have a job, but when I look at all the schmucks out there who do I know I will get one. Not by going out and partying, but by going out and experiencing things. Trying to find, maybe something that I hadn't discovered before, may be the actual place to start my career. My diploma isn't an end-all tell-all to what I'll be doing. I have to find it while keeping my head above water, but I have to give it time.
