What are you going to do now?

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By: Ashley Constant

McMaster still is a big part of my life. I still bus to campus every day for work, and most of my friends are still students, yet I can no longer claim the identity of being a McMaster student.

Instead, I guess I have to accept the title of McMaster alumni. This past June, I graduated with a B.A. in English with Honours. Now I’m trapped in that terrifying space between spaces—no longer a student, but not quite an adult member of the work force.

University acted as a pause button between being a childish high schooler and the aforementioned adult—a taxing, expensive, mentally draining pause button. However, it gave me four years to figure out who I am, and provided me with all the tools to do so. And by all accounts, I should know by now. That’s what people tell you about university—it’s the place where you are supposed to plan out the rest of your life. Yet, somewhere between moving into Wallingford Hall and walking across the stage at my convocation, I forgot to give my future much thought. I guess I just assumed that when the time came I would just know, much like the idea we get it in our heads that once we reach adulthood we’ll magically know how to do taxes and how to avoid watching six episodes of a TV show in a single night. Or maybe everyone was given the secret at some point and no one bothered to tell me. That’s certainly the impression some particularly well put-together students give off.

I suspect this feeling came from the fact that while I was a part of a very broad field of study, most of my friends came to McMaster for specific fields of studies that are streamlined to cater to a specific career. Their security appeared to rub off on me. When people would ask me what I was planning on doing after school (and people would stress the “after” part almost as if to put forth the idea the last four years would be for nothing if I didn’t have an answer to this question), I would shrug and say “I have four years to decide!” Then it became three, then two, then years turned into months and suddenly I was handed this great piece of paper declaring that I could pick out themes of long, drawn out texts and could adequately write papers on the subject. Nowhere on that thick, luxuriously printed certificate could I manage to find a map explaining what my future held.

The next four months were spent mentally beating myself up because I had failed, hadn’t I? While I had this amazing education, I didn’t have a plan. But as I moped and watched people around me live their seemingly successful lives, I realized something: they were winging it too. Friends who started studying one thing were now studying another, or were starting work in completely new fields. Some were moving out of their parents’ homes, and others were moving back. I’m even starting to see engagement and wedding pictures appear on the social media accounts of my high school friends. Just because I decided to pursue a university degree at this point in my life, I did not decide to activate some invisible countdown that ominously ticked down the moments until I had to have an answer to everyone’s “What now?” question. That countdown didn’t hit zero when I put on my graduation gown, and I didn’t fail when I still couldn’t quite answer my curious friends and family.

There is no timeline. There is no wrong way to discover what you’re passionate about, and if you happen to find yourself starting over three or four times, that’s fine too. I’m taking a little longer to decide what I want to do with the rest of my life, but you can ask again in a few months.

Photo Credit: 123RF.com

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