“How’s the job search? Have you heard back from anywhere? Got any interviews?

These are all questions second-semester seniors seem to get asked every other second of the day. It feels like applying to college all over again when you were asked a million times about your decision. Everyone is always rushing to ask about the next step in your life. Why can’t we all just chill out for a sec and not rush to the next thing?

I keep talking to people going for interviews and finalizing their resumes to apply for jobs. Everyone is stressed out about not having a job right out of college and I get it. I’ve spent so many hours perfecting my resume just in the last week. We all want to be stress free when we graduate with our first job offer under our belt. Then when we get the dreaded question “How’s the job search?” we will have an actual answer. But why? What is the rush?

Why not try something different? Take some time after college to really see what you want to do. Don’t just hurry to the closest place that will hire you because most likely you are just taking it to get that first job. Look for that job that you really want. I know there are only so many jobs open to recent grads, but getting something you are interested in will only make you work harder.

We spend day after day working toward a degree, one (or two) discipline(s) that we pour our heart and soul into, to learn inside and out to prepare for the real world. I know I love the field I’m going into, but doing something a little different will allow me to explore something else I am interested in that is completely different from my career.

Professors always talk about how taking a class outside your major makes you well rounded and allows you to see things from different perspectives. I think this applies just as much to post-grad life as well. Volunteering, traveling, taking art classes, road tripping with some friends or simply just spending time doing something you love that you haven’t had time for during these four tiresome, yet fun, years at college is important. It will allow you to refresh before moving onto the next step in your life. Once you are working you will have a limited number of vacation days and you don’t want to regret not taking some time for yourself.

So do something different, maybe even something a little out of your comfort zone and see something from another perspective before you jump into the career world. The career world will be waiting, even if it takes some of us a little while to find our place in it.