A Cairdfore Opinion is happy to welcome guest blogger Lauren to give her take on all things Gen-Y!
This post will probably not tell you anything new about the confused and self-absorbed 20-something generation, but perhaps it will shed some light on the situation so many of us find ourselves in at the moment. I'm 24 years old and I graduated with honours from a good university with a Bachelor of Arts degree, focusing on English as my major. No, I don't particularly want to be a teacher, just in case some of you were (almost definitely were) wondering. I've been out of school now for nearly two years and my diploma is literally, and figuratively, gathering dust in the depths of my closet. I've looked at it exactly once to see if they had properly spelled my last name. They had.
Great! Now what?
The point of that question being that unless you are part of the select few who have an abundance of motivation, courage, and direction, you are likely-to put it plainly-a bit lost, just like the rest of us.
After leaving university-or, for that matter, any period of life where there is a definitive end-you are quite abruptly left to your own muddled devices. Then hopefully self-preservation kicks in and you realize that you need a job in order to make money to pay rent and eat and do whatever you like to do when you're not working and eating. With any luck, you actually enjoy your job. For me, an English degree doesn't really help with any of that, and those devices I was left with seem to be failing and leaving me in the middle of nowhere.
I was recently brainstorming career directions with a friend and trying to figure out where my degree might be useful. I was getting so frustrated because it didn't really look like English could fit anywhere but teaching or journalism, and I wasn't keen on either. He said "It's funny when you start a new job after you graduate and it's like 'What do you mean I don't have to write a 15 page paper on this?!' " And it's so odd for me to think about how much time I've spent (wasted?) developing a skill that I haven't used since leaving school. I said something similar to that same friend, adding that I felt almost totally useless, and he said "Well, you're not. And you can't just do nothing." I found a lot of honesty and truth in that and it's become something of a mantra when I feel unmotivated: You're not useless. You can't do nothing.
My advice for myself, but you are obviously welcome to it - it's a free country, is:
Do something! Choose a direction and move.
I know, easier said than done.
But try, anyway. You'll feel better for it.
