The Complicated Feelings Surrounding Graduation
By Features Editor Chloe Barrett
The emotions surrounding the ordeal of graduation can be a complex bunch. While your peers toss their graduation caps into the air, an undeniable look of joy warming their faces, you can be consumed by feelings of doubt and even dread. I want to share this tiny piece for the purpose of saying that these feelings are valid and completely normal.
Education is seen, by many, as almost a safe haven. Like a tiny island that you briefly rest on before continuing the remainder of a long, tiresome journey. It offers a strict routine in a safe, familiar environment, surrounded by friends with similar goals. When all of that is stripped away and you are forced into what some deem as “the real world”, you can feel like you are minuscule and lost. After all, when a familiar setting has suddenly been stripped away from you, of course, you are left pondering what on earth comes next. These apprehensions are incredibly normal, especially if you regularly struggle with issues like anxiety and depression. The daunting challenge of suddenly being pushed from the nest which has consumed the first twenty or so years of your life is, quite frankly, terrifying. It leaves you wondering if: should you be sneakily checking your LinkedIn profile during the graduation ceremony. Or rapidly firing off job applications with quickly thrown-together cover letters that hopefully do not look too desperate?
Not exactly.
You should be feeling proud. After hunkering down and studying for what feels like, and might have been years, the weight has finally been lifted from your shoulders. Even if it feels impossible, try to release your worries for a brief moment and bask in that revelation. Perhaps you are the first in the family to attend college, struggled particularly with a tough module that others seemed to glide through, or found college to be an overall stressful experience and had to repeat a year. Regardless of all those factors, you have officially become a graduate. Congratulations my friend, it has all been worth it.
