The graduate slump

So you've finished, you're free—now what? Incessant wallow and confusion, that's what!

pic unrelated – was titled slump, so I went with it

In 2016, the Walden Institute of Social Sciences recognised 'The Graduate Slump' as a natural post-graduate phenomenon—it's basic premise being a feeling of misdirection with freedom and accomplishment. The study followed a single subject through three months of graduate status, noting the visible effect determined by termination of formal education.

When formal education has been a constant in your life for 18 years, the completion of this structure is something that left me feeling a little dumbfounded. When your compass has always pointed true north to the top of the education tree and upon reaching that point you are now surveying the graduate landscape. To know which direction you should jump is certainly a task of which I'd never known the likes. It scared me a little.

Around me, I can see various friends with abudances of talent, given enough freedom to live a life without any. For me, I get a slight 'silver spoon' approach to this as I had a job lined up straight after graduation but I can see given 36 avenues of direction, choosing the correct and career inducing path is about as easy as cleaning a bag of chips off the floor before your mildly overweight labrador scoffs at least half.

All this freedom and indecision very quickly depreciates into a slump, a graduate slump. The feeling and mindset of great confusion hosted by all your achievements. Finding yourself sitting doing nothing because there is too much you can do; not seeing the woods for the trees, and every other cliché statement you can think of.

Freelance, Agencies, In-House, Murder? 

After escaping three years of immense pressure, pushing you towards your future—you are now stood knee-deep in the middle of the field, THE FIELD OF WORK!!!! IN THE FARM OF INDUSTRY!!! spooky.

Now you are thinking – Yes, I know this feeling. What should I do?

Well, honestly you shouldn't take your answers from me, but I'll give you some if you'd like it. I mean, you are taking advice from a disgruntled young fellows poorly curated internet blog, so perhaps you should really seek advice from someone else.

Just do something. Anything. It doesn't matter if it's shite, because if it is, so what.

The only way to stop yourself from not doing anything is to bloody well do something—make a dance to some terrible Abba B-Side, draw all over someones suburban property or set fire to your right leg whilst reciting Hippocrates in a slam poetry fashion. 

It doesn't matter what it is, just do something, put it on instagram, put it on a blog and reap in the moneyz boi. Or alternatively you could just do nothing—it's only £40,000 of debt after all.