As someone who’s in their last year of college, I’m surrounded by either fellow seniors or fresh graduates. Ask one of us about the way we feel approaching graduation and you’ll hear exciting cheers and exclamations of how we can’t wait to leave this hellhole that is university.
However, when our excitement calms down, the real talk starts. And it’s all fears about everything that we’ll face when we leave our student-bubble.
Finding a job
This is the first response I get when I ask anyone about what they’re most afraid of when they graduate: What if I can’t find a job right away? What if I can’t find a job in my field of study? What if I can’t find a job that pays well? What if I can’t find a job that makes me happy? What if I can’t find any job to begin with?
The thought of years of studying leading to a job that was not what you had imagined and dreamed about during all of these years scares the bejesus out of everyone.
Army Service
I have yet to meet a guy who is not absolutely dreading serving in the Army. When graduation approaches, this seems to be the only thing guys can talk about. Their sole purpose in life becomes getting exemption from service before they see one or three years of their life spent in barracks.
Exposure
They always warn us that when we graduate and start our “real life”, we will have to deal with people from every walk of life. What if I don’t get along with people around me? What if I don’t like the people in what society constitutes as my “environment”? What if I get cheated, played, manipulated?
Losing touch
Drifting a bit apart when you leave the place that used to connect you and your friends together is inevitable. But barely recognizing one of my close friends when I run into her 15 years from now is something I would never ever want to go through.
Having to migrate
A constant struggle within every young person right now is whether to leave or stay in Egypt. And if we do decide to leave, where do we go?
Social Pressure
To find a stable job. To get married. To have children. To live in a big apartment, in a good neighborhood. When people graduate, the eyes of their parents (and their third cousins) are on them. It exhausts me just to think about the constant nagging, endless questions and pitiful looks we’ll get because “we’re so lost in life”.
Getting sucked into life’s vicious cycle
What worries us even more than social pressure is actually giving in to it. To lose my passion for life and leading one that consists of waking up, going to a 9-to-5 corporate job, going back home to eat and sleep and repeating the whole thing the next day is my worst fear of them all.
Giving up on dreams
I fear it’s all gonna start with “Oh, I’m just doing this job to save up for opening a diner”. I fear that when I get used to the “normal” life everyone’s leading, following my dreams will become harder and harder. I fear that I will lose my spark and wake up one day wondering where the hell all of my larger-than-life dreams disappeared.
Making (the wrong) choices
What if I choose the wrong career path? What if I stay in Egypt and realize that this was the worst decision of my life? What if I choose to emigrate and end up in a place that only makes me sad every day? What if I marry the wrong person? What if I choose money over inner peace?
In college, making wrong choices could cost you anywhere from a semester to five years of studying what you don’t want. In life, I fear that making the wrong choices will cost me a lifetime.
WE SAID THIS: Don’t miss “An Open Letter to 20-Year-Olds”.