The end of a major chapter is oftentime cause for celebration. It certainly was as a kid. Finishing preschool, finishing elementary school, finishing middle school and finishing high school. While feelings may have been somewhat dreary for these chapters coming to an end, for the most part, what comes after is much more exciting.
The end of one’s schooling usually reflects some newly gained autonomy and responsibility. Finishing elementary school and going to middle school invites room for bad words. Finishing middle school and moving on to high school involves room for driving and going out. But on the other side of the finish line, when the graduation is college, the upgrade does not feel as glorious.
What’s coming next, presumably for most people, is either graduate school or going straight into the workforce. For those who are diving deeper into their major excitedly with graduate school, they are the exception. That is exciting. But the latter — going into the workforce — this is where the tragedy begins.
One can say “goodbye” to life as they know it. The life of the nine to five is a subtle brutality. Having to move for work, spending less time with friends who have shifts during different hours and being spiritually exhausted five times a week seems terrifying. Perhaps for those who graduated high school and went straight into the work force, they can sympathize with the notion and then some. But this specific feeling is a kind of “ivy dread.”
And what’s worse is if — and mostly like it’s an if — there is no job lined up after school, the feeling becomes more aggressive. For many, the summers were a time to max out on internships and build resumes for post-undergraduate opportunities. However for a quiet but sizeable group of the student population, these summers were a time to decompress from the exhaustion and stress of school life.
To now be in one’s final quarter, looking down the barrel of the gun that is higher education — with a mediocre grade point average and a few random jobs to show for it — things are not looking good.
Certainly this feeling is not new. Gen X’ers in particular made plenty of media on this exact malaise. Take Noah Baumbach’s “Kicking and Screaming” for example. This notion has been sitting with society for decades. But social media makes this a different beast.
Feeling like one is not where they should be is a common feeling but seeing every video online showing people who seem to be “where they should be” makes the dread overwhelming. The “day in a life” video format has been co-opted by people like this. The majority of these videos depict people in beautiful homes living in beautiful cities with extravagant luxuries and always time for the gym with a good sleep schedule.
For a long time, major studio executives of television and film have maintained that people do not want to watch the lives of boring people, and perhaps that is why there are no videos depicting the day in the life of a student who’s graduating with little to look forward to. There’s something cool and exciting to see somebody voice over about the millions of fun things they get up to in a day. However, making content about dreading the same set of circumstances day after day just sounds sad to engage in.
There are certainly worse situations one can be in. Nobody is going to argue that graduating with a degree is not better than experiencing life in a war-torn country. There are millions of people online that one can see living in much more trying circumstances. But the acknowledgement of this does not always make things easier.
Especially when the degree one is graduating with has a reputation online with having a lack of prospects. While it may be funny to some to see meme after meme about how little job opportunities certain majors end up having, the reality becomes biting when a person is studying that exact major.
It feels like to many previous generations, going to college and getting a bachelors was all that one needed to be set for life. Simply get into a college that matters and then it’s smooth sailing from there. But increasingly within a late-stage capitalist society, as the number of unemployed college graduates increases, without the number of job opportunities increasing proportionally, it feels like everyone is fighting for the same end.
This is a quiet bitterness that is oftentime never spoken of because it feels both self-inflicted and uninteresting. One may ask, “Where can you really go with all of this anger and sadness?” But surely there is hope on the other side. There must be. One must imagine Sisyphus happy, or whatever Albert Camus said. But in the meantime, for those experiencing this secret agony, just know there are many in the same boat.
