What did you do after you graduated?
How did you adjust to the real world after being in the bubble of uni?
How long did it take you to get on your feet?
Other peoples experiences and perspectives would be appreciated.

I've been out for 4 years, and I'm thinking maybe around September?That's when I'll be on my feet.

Bad jobs & bad apartments & more education so far. But the apartments and jobs do get better as time goes on.

Before finishing college I took a blue collar night job. After being laid off because of economic hard times I went to California and lived in Oakland(high black population) where the unemployment rate was 20%, started a very small craft business and learned how to sell myself. After six months I went back to the Midwest to finish school and was offered an office job at the company that had laid me off a year earlier. There is when I realized office work would not be for me. I then finished school where I was already partly self-employed. From then on I have worked for myself--even when I had a fulltime job to keep the family afloat. Learning a trade after college has given me much more self-determination and motivation.

College helped me to discover myself and realize that I don't need to be important to anyone other than my children. Friends say I could have easily become a millionaire and an executive had I wanted that path. Instead I am a common man with common talents and interests.

My poetic/spiritual journey of discovery has lead me to a continuation of the learning process; where the challenges presented at college helped me face the wide path, life's experience and challenges lead me to the narrow and less traveled path. Few people are afforded the opportunities early enough in life to make such important choices. I am grateful to those along the way that have aided in my learning; most of all to my coaches and an academic advisor who shared some profound wisdom with me in my formative years. I believe they did that because they could see by the way I lived that I was listening.



"It isn't the knowledge that one has that makes the difference in a life; it is what action one takes utilizing the knowledge one has attained; owning a credential is abysmal to the personal challenges set before one who has the motivation and capability of learning" "
~~carefulcarpenter

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Sophia is wisdom-- the Holy Spirit. Within each of us, she rests. One day you will know her. She is the divine spark that will awaken you from your slumber and fear.
For those who oppose her,
fear the feminine within;
do not love the rain,
nor the fragrance of the springtime,
when wildflowers bloom again.
Sophia_ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEW2_QrFXik

WHAAAAT????!?!? You have children?

this surprised me more

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i think the fact that i keep a bag of doritos under my bed pretty much sums me up

"Its for people like you that lobotomies were designed for!" - AshMcAuliffe, in defense of his dear friend A*gel D*st [edited at request of User]

I can't speak for myself since I haven't even started yet, never mind graduated.

But I've been talking to my boyfriend, and he just got his first job a few weeks ago after finishing uni last may. And he hates it. He's doing exactly what he wanted to do, as far as I can tell, but just can't deal with the mon-fri 9-5 (or in his case, 11-7 or whatever, i guess the greeks don't get up as early as we do?) and knowing that he has to get through five days of hard graft, where the days just drag on and on, to get to his free time. And then the free time passes so quickly.

Pretty depressing. It's a fact of life, though. It has to be done.

I went straight from school into a full time job so I never really experienced that change in the same way when I entered the big bad world of work, but having been a student for the past year and just gone back into my old job for a summer stint, I know exactly what he means. It's a fucking drag.

But I'm sure you get used to it.

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Uni is a place to work on a discipline. This is a process which helps a person to adapt to life's challenges and rewards. I felt it disciplined me to be able to face my fears and insecurities better, and to handle those things in life that "have to be done".

For others, work experience can teach a different discipline. In many ways practical life experience called "tacit" knowledge is much more valuable; but this is knowledge that can't be taught easily. Uni is a business and knowledge is for sale. When this knowledge becomes out-dated or no longer in demand the container of this commodity must adapt to conditions. The discipline of "tacit" knowledge is "common sense". A person is fortunate to be able to choose between which system best serves them.

For me, college days were the best years of my life; not because it helped me be important or to amass great wealth and social position, but because it taught me how to adapt to lifes changes and vissisitudes . I learned to face the fear of failure by discovering that I was not a title or a degree or a University Alumnus--but that I was a human being that embraced change and challenge. Sometimes a degree can be the blockage to a person's freedom and pursuit of satisfying opportunities.

__________________
Sophia is wisdom-- the Holy Spirit. Within each of us, she rests. One day you will know her. She is the divine spark that will awaken you from your slumber and fear.
For those who oppose her,
fear the feminine within;
do not love the rain,
nor the fragrance of the springtime,
when wildflowers bloom again.
Sophia_ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEW2_QrFXik

A carpenter is a very common profession that demands patience, pragmatism, creativity, common sense, high-spiritedness, motivation, practicality, dependability, etc. This balancing of traits can develop a condition that gives a person their wings. It is said that common sense is not so common, though. Higher level managers and professionals seldom have these traits and rarely have their wings. Self-importance robs a person of the imagination needed to create and also bring these creations to practical fruition. Common does not mean mediocre; this is the more common trait of people who never risk failure or low social status.

__________________
Sophia is wisdom-- the Holy Spirit. Within each of us, she rests. One day you will know her. She is the divine spark that will awaken you from your slumber and fear.
For those who oppose her,
fear the feminine within;
do not love the rain,
nor the fragrance of the springtime,
when wildflowers bloom again.
Sophia_ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEW2_QrFXik

I left uni, did a masters, left the masters, did tutoring this year, going back in the autumn to do graduate medicine. I am a bad example of what you do after you leave uni...

College helped me to adapt to the 'vicissitudes' of daily life so that when the college graduate, Careful Cipherer, pens 'Vissisitudes' in his KR posts, I can still figure out what he is talking about--sometimes--well, --usually. (it's not the poor spelling that makes it challenging to figure out Sophy's meanings)

Even though the natural change and mutation of his spelling frequently occurs, I can adapt to it tacitly, because of my life experiences. A recent easy one, a Sophy_ 'give me', was his spelling of Gloucester as Glouchester. Imagine how he pronounces it though.

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Home, home on the Range,
Where the deer and the jackalopes play,
Where seldom is heard a metaphorical word,
And The Gurus don't know what to say.

See, I'm not perfect! And you are a careful critic. You could have been a school marm.

I've come to the conclusion that spelling skills are a left brain funktion. This project has challenged my right brain and its poor word spelling recall.


Roses are red;
Vilets are blew;
If I could spell well;
They just mite let me out of the zoo
~~carefulcarpkrapper

__________________
Sophia is wisdom-- the Holy Spirit. Within each of us, she rests. One day you will know her. She is the divine spark that will awaken you from your slumber and fear.
For those who oppose her,
fear the feminine within;
do not love the rain,
nor the fragrance of the springtime,
when wildflowers bloom again.
Sophia_ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEW2_QrFXik

Post uni life has been rubbish for me. 2 years on, I am still temping, still living in shitty housing and am grinding myself into more debt.

This is my own fault however, as apathy is clouding the view of my ambition.

HAHAHA... i moved away from home after uni expecting to get a decent post grad job... no-one will take me on.. so ive been ploughing away working in a fucking Co-Op of all places whilst trying to get a decent post-grad job... I think the North East is racist to people from the North West

well thank god we're all in the same boat!
I really think students should be informed more about the realistic repercussions after uni and what to prepare yourself for.
I honestly think I would have been better off not even going in the first place, as you kind of avoid what real life is like when studying full time.
But hey, I had a laugh so I guess it was worth it for character building.
Grad fairs don't really help either.
And without wanting to sound like a spoilt bitch...I just feel like I'm really not cut out for 9-5 office work. I'm too much of a free spirit and I've really had to comprimise myself and my values this year.
Does anyone else feel this need to live in a creative, artistic environment and do something slightly out of the norm and less well paid in order to satisfy yourself?

Maybe if people looked at uni as a 4-5 year contracted relationship with someone set-up by their parents and peers, we would all have a better set of expectations in life. Let's say when you turned 18 you were paired-up and married to someone of the opposite sex under a termed contract by the church and state. What would you learn about yourself in that period of time; and what would you learn about the values in life? Would the rest of your life be the same? Would you know yourself better?

Sometimes we learn what we don't want for ourselves by being committed for awhile to something we discover later we don't really want; mainly because our expectations and dreams are a product of culture and not necessarily something we have consciously thought about. Uni gives a person a few more years to make decisions. Under the philosophical proposal of a contracted pre-adult marriage/relationship, those who don't learn to think for themselves would remain in a set-up marriage and possibly never know anything else about their potential. This is how it is for many people who come out of uni and do what society expects of them; whether it be parents or the state. Remember, our ego identity is established by our parents. Many people live their entire lives trying to please everyone but themselves--'cause they don't really ever get the opportunity to know who they really are.

__________________
Sophia is wisdom-- the Holy Spirit. Within each of us, she rests. One day you will know her. She is the divine spark that will awaken you from your slumber and fear.
For those who oppose her,
fear the feminine within;
do not love the rain,
nor the fragrance of the springtime,
when wildflowers bloom again.
Sophia_ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEW2_QrFXik

Sophia that's exactly the case.
I have had the opportunity to be exactly the person I want to be. But financial reasons made it impossible to sustain, so I've had to move back home to be pay off my debts and save.
As it stands, my life feels like it has been put on hold in order for me to stand on my own two feet again and right now I work in a job that really comprimises my character purely for money. And I live in a place that is the polar oppposite of me.
I worry that I will never live up to the image that I create for myself again it all seems impossible to achieve right now.
I am grateful for the experiences I had but I wish I was back in those circumstances now. I feel like a shadow of my former self, but as you point out, am grateful that I got to live that life, even if for a short while.
I just want it back!

But now you know that you are more than a cloned clown or marionette.

You've been to the dance.

__________________
Sophia is wisdom-- the Holy Spirit. Within each of us, she rests. One day you will know her. She is the divine spark that will awaken you from your slumber and fear.
For those who oppose her,
fear the feminine within;
do not love the rain,
nor the fragrance of the springtime,
when wildflowers bloom again.
Sophia_ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEW2_QrFXik

That's true but it's a double edge sword because now I'm surrounded by people who haven't and I can't help but treat them with contempt.
I suppose I just need to get back on track asap and move back to the town that feels like home to me which is inhabited by artists and creative people.