<p>I can't say I experienced each of these stages myself, but there was a definite dread of sorts about the thought of heading into the "real world", as I would often hear from others as well. Granted, the transition would have been helped immensely had there been a job waiting after graduation.</p>
<p>The</a> 7 Emotional Stages of Today?s College Graduate | The Savvy Intern by YouTern</p>
<p>Love the pessimistic attitude this guy brings ~sarcasm</p>
<p>Who is the blog writer? In what way is he qualified to write any of this?</p>
<p>Personally, I do not fear any of these things. Perhaps if I were an arts major at an average university I would be concerned.</p>
<p>Love the pessimistic attitude this guy brings ~not sarcasm</p>
<p>This is very true. Fifty percent of college grads are unemployed or underemployed. I personally know people who went to very good schools and are still unemployed. It is a tough job market right now. I would say that this is the case for the majority of students in today’s terrible job market.</p>
<p>Meh, this is only true if you have a humanities/soft social science degree. STEM majors and business majors are generally more excited about life after school because it is actually less work than school! #Mathematics Major. Good choice.</p>
<p>110percentwahoo: There are definitely humanities people who do NOT feel this way. And I’m sure there are STEM people who fear life beyond school. </p>
<p>I think it’s a lot more about the person than the major. Some people reacted this way for high school and elementary school graduations, too. That’s just their coping mechanism. Some have (eyeroll at the term) quarter-life crises. But plenty of people graduate with either hope or plans–or both. It’s hard to get a job, of course, but it’s easier to get a job if you have an open and optimistic attitude.</p>
<p>Pre med students must be loving the thoughts of life after graduation! More school… And more school… And super low-paying residency internship… And horrible working hours… And no time for family… </p>
<p>Not that I’m complaining as I am a future pre med :D</p>
<p>Here’s something I’ve started to realize. Many schools have a terrible career services department. Some of my friends were shocked that I had a job waiting for me after I graduated, as they didn’t realize it was even possible to secure a job before being ready to start. Meanwhile, I was freaking out around Thanksgiving of senior year because I didn’t already have one or more job offers for post-graduation.</p>
<p>I went to a school where there were a lot of business students, and those students didn’t mess around when it came to job searching. As a result, everyone kind of knew that for many industries, recruiting happens in the fall. The thought that I had (somewhat properly and somewhat … well, crazy) was that if a company in the industry I wanted to enter was still looking for people in the spring, it probably was not a very good company.</p>
<p>Applying for jobs was awful: dozens and dozens of applications, networking events, interviews and phone calls, hundreds of emails, hundreds of hours of stress. At times it felt like I would never get a job. But then it happened - two offers in two days - and suddenly, I felt like the six months of searching - starting in early June and culminating with offers in early December - were all worthwhile.</p>
<p>I credit career services for my success. Starting junior year, career services made sure to reach out to all students. If you wanted to go to graduate/professional school, you were directed to advisers to help you; if you wanted to get a job, you were given access to seemingly unlimited resources. I personally met with advisers six times. During the first, my adviser stopped me about five minutes in and asked what I wanted to do and why… I couldn’t give a good answer because I didn’t really know. We spent the next 45 minutes just talking through things, and after we were done, she helped me to focus my search. The second visit was resume destruction: she helped me to rewrite my resume from top to bottom. The next two visits were mainly about how to apply - how to write personalized cover letters (yes, every cover letter is personalized), how to interview, how to follow up. And the last two were about deciding what to do with offers I received. All of this was before Christmas.</p>
<p>Finding a job is daunting, but I was very lucky to have a career services center that supported me well. Many schools do their students a disservice either by doing a poor job of highlighting the things career services centers can do or by having a career services center that is not very helpful. While it is the student’s responsibility to get going and figure out their employment situation, universities should do a better job of guiding their students. It’s great to talk about how students should “find themselves” during college and how the purpose of college is higher learning, not job training, but the reality is that kids are coming out of school jobless, hopeless, and tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Schools take so much of their students’ money that it certainly is not too much to ask that they at least try to help their kids.</p>
<p>“Here’s something I’ve started to realize. Many schools have a terrible career services department”</p>
<p>No truer words have ever been spoken.</p>
<p>When I went looking at my “unemployed engineering STEM major” grads career services website, I was truly disappointed. I compared it to other schools and was shocked at the differences.
In this new age of unemployed college grads and companies that do not want to hire new grads, a very proactive career services department/alumini network will be the criteria my next child evaluates college choices.</p>
<p>There is one point brought up in this thread that I want to address: </p>
<p>Do NOT assume that having a “useful” major is going to guarantee anything.</p>
<p>I know lots of people with “useful” majors who still ended up spending several months unemployed after graduation (and they were complete nervous wrecks about it, I might add). It’s not just the art history and philosophy students who are struggling.</p>
<p>Yeah, already have a really great job lined up for after graduation, so I’ll just skip ahead to 7…</p>
<p>The writer discusses all seven emotional stages as if she had experienced them all herself. I’m kidding about that, but what really bugs me is the title and the list. The title oversimplifies that complexity of emotional stages that college students experience. When she says “The Seven Emotional Stages,” she is claiming that college graduates are capable of experiencing just seven emotions. Graduates feel optimism, enthusiasm, happiness, pride, and thousands more. They don’t just feel one or more of those pessimistic emotions listed in the article. I think she should remove the article “the” to avoid the oversimplification.</p>
<p>My big beef is this: “This is when you’ll discover the ease of life before and during college does not translate over to life after college.”</p>
<p>As a person who went from a job back to college, I can comfortably say that employed life was significantly easier than being back in school. The transition is always a bit rough, but frankly it’s a lot easier when you’re getting paid for all the work you’re doing.</p>
<p>The career services aspect is very true. That is one thing that I looked at when DS went off to college. The Business Deans won me over when they talkes about how they prepare the students to get a job. The school was also one of the top recruitment places for my son’s original major.</p>
<p>For DD, I am not as concerned with the job placement but graduate school placement. Not sure what she wants her career to be, however she is 99% sure it will include graduate school immediately aftwr undergraduate.</p>
<p>Once we did a college tour and spent time talking to a college senior from this great Ivy League school. I was shocked when she told me that she didn’t have a clue as to if she would have a job after graduation. That taught me you have to be clear with goals amd make sure career/graduate placement is part of criteria for college selection.</p>
<p>Daniellee, and others: the posted article/blog is a play on Kubler-Ross’ 7 stages of grief:</p>
<p>[The</a> Five Stages of Grief - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross & David Kessler](<a href=“http://grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/]The”>Five Stages of Grief by Elisabeth Kubler Ross & David Kessler)</p>
<p>The ideas put forth by Kubler-Ross are well known enough to use in this referential manner without identifying the source, I suppose. I thought they had become sort of iconic in popular culture.</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing this. Kind of rings true.</p>
<p>How to avoid all these steps? Don’t major in liberal arts. Tough it out in STEM, it will pay off.</p>
<p>Totally stuck at depression right now…</p>