Senior Year Graduation Blues

Posted by Naomi Rockler-Gladen Aug 14, 2008

Senior year is fun--but it's also stressful. For many students, true independence from your family is about to happen for the first time. You also have to say goodbye to the identity of being a student and figure out who you are in the real world.

I remember Senior Week at Rutgers University. Everyone was having a good time, but there was an undercurrent of sadness that no one was talking about. I was standing on a balcony overlooking the Raritan River with my friend Steve, and he voiced what a lot of us were thinking. "I'm scared about what I'm going to do with my life," he said.

This surprised me, as Steve was one of the brainiest and most practical people I knew. Sure enough, he went into software design and has become very successful. I knew he would.

Myself, I wasn't stressed out about the future too much because I thought I had all the answers. Lacking financial support from my family, and too chicken to experiment much with the real world, I got myself accepted to grad school so I could become a professor. I stayed true to this safe path for a long time and was a professor for eight years, until I finally realized what an awful choice this was for me. So then I got brave and became a freelance writer.

Seniors, if you're freaking out about the future, hang in there. You really don't have to have all the answers. Steve didn't, and he did fine. I though I did, and it took me a long time to make the right turn-- and I'm fine, too. Trust in yourself to go fumble around the real world for awhile and discover your path.

Here's more about the senior year graduation blues.