Life After University

I graduated from university in July of 2013 and as it’s now a good half a year past that time, I thought it might be helpful to others to share my story of life after university. How I thought life would be and how it turned out. It’s also a little nostalgia/reflection for me too. This is my personal experience and won’t be yours, unless you are me from a parallel universe, mimicking my life, which if you are, come and find me so we can expand the list of twin super heroes.I studied Biology at university. I absolutely adored doing my degree and came out the other end with a really good result. You’re welcomed into a place full of (mostly) like-minded people, where you grow confidence, get to sculpt yourself into your best version, with little responsibility, a bank of government money and high hopes for the future. That’s how I saw it anyway and on graduation day I felt elated.

How did I expect to feel after university? I hoped to have made new friends, experience cool things and that I’d have a clear idea of what type of career I’d jump into, obvious things, two of which I did do, however, I am not a marine biologist or a clinical molecular geneticist, so something went a little bit wrong along the way. Whoops.

So what I actually experienced after leaving university was a very horrible, very real feeling of being lost. I had no clue what I wanted to do or be or achieve - “You should have prepared more, you had three years”. Throughout studying I saw careers advisers, spoke to my friends, family, lecturers and scoured the depths of the internet for inspiration. Nothing captured my heart or mind. Since July, I’ve been in and out of jobs, which some, though albeit, were related to my degree, I took because I needed the money. I can't do something if I don’t enjoy it and because of this, it has been a very hard year for me. I’ve gone from feeling absolutely fantastic to feeling low and anxious, and then right back to fantastic; so expect a colour wheel of feelings after university.

Although I sound miserable, the past half a year hasn’t all been a hopeless horror story, maybe more like The Shining where the mother and child escape at the end, all the better off for the psychopathic father’s death. Half a year is a long time to find out more about yourself. I didn’t know who I was when I was at university; I hadn’t had the time to work out what was best for me. Since university, I’ve found happiness in being kind to others, focused on my physical and mental health, found myself in weird, outstanding situations, discovered the things that I enjoy doing and identified the strongest parts of myself. Through experiencing different fields, I know the jobs that I don’t want to do and this is very valuable.

I am now employed in a new job and have a lot of different, little life projects pending, which is very exciting. I will never regret going to university and the best advice I can give to anyone, however obvious it sounds, is to really think about what you want to do for a career, before and during your studies. If it doesn't go to plan, don’t worry, because if you are like me, you’ll probably never know what you want to do and that curse will give you valuable opportunity to explore life and your abilities (plus you get to be a lovable fuck-up). Though finding a pathway in life is important, so is happiness, and the latter makes the former a lot more easier to achieve.