In the last installment of “The Real World: Graduation” I reminded all of you of your uniqueness and the unique gift that you can offer to the world-yourself. When I give a gift to someone, I usually do my best to put thought and/or time into it. I get great pleasure out of crafting the perfect gift for someone I care for. The more thought and time I put into a gift, the more excited I get to deliver it to the gift recipient. I will be honest, there have been a handful of thoughtlessly thrown together gifts I have given to people over the course of my twenty-two years of life. I can recall one ill-fated birthday gift I bought for a high school friend-a toiletry bag filled with soap, lotion, a loofa, and (for some reason) tampons. It doesn’t surprise me that this person didn’t invite me to any birthday gatherings after that.
Anyway, all this talk about gifts and gift giving is to help explain the way that we give our own selves to this world. When thinking about all this, the phrase, “You reap what you sow” rings in my ears. What’s true for tests is true for life. The more you apply yourself and the more of yourself you invest in your studies, the better you will do. Who really wants to cruise through life only to look back and regret the things that they never applied themselves to do? So, how does this relate to the life of a college graduate? I am hoping that the answers to the questions in this column will help us both to succeed and put our best foot forward as we enter life outside of college. As a result, we can give the best version of ourselves to the world. I know that if we put time and energy into learning what we need to know as college graduates, we will be all the more excited to give the gift of ourselves to this world.
But the only way to get these answers is to ask questions. This is where you come in! I need your questions. E-mail me with them. If you know who I am, stop me in the hall and ask me! I’m eagerly awaiting them. Until then I will be asking my own questions because I’m sure that I am not the only one who has them. I originally started this column because of my own desire to find answers to the many questions I have about entering the real world. I can remember sitting with my dad talking about the idea over sesame chicken and dumplings and writing down some of my questions. I titled the list “Things a college grad needs to know about” and proceeded to jot down everything from finding a job to loosing the freshman 15 on a napkin. I would love to hear the things that you, my fellow soon-to-be grads, need to know about!
As we all know, spring break has just passed and the semester is officially half way over. I am not saying this to freak anyone out (although I am freaking myself out a little as I write this), but rather to serve as a reminder that graduation is fast approaching. With that said, I have been doing a lot of research on the topic of college graduation. It seems like I am not the only one concerned about the transition from college to graduate life. I have discovered a few top notch websites created for recent grads by people who have been in the same “What in the world am I doing??” boat. If you’re in search of answers, check out www.gradspot.com. The site was created by three friends: Matt Demmer, Anthony Clavel and Stuart Schultz and describes itself as “the premiere online destination for life after college”. Another good site is www.lifeaftercollege.org created by UCLA grad Jenny Blake. Both sites are chock full of advice for curious college graduates and are perfect for browsing when you need a little pre-graduation “everything will be okay” pat on the back. Check them out when you have questions, but not before you e-mail those questions to me! I’m waiting.
