Rebuilding your life after college

A lot of people I talk to who are recently out of college feel very lost and scared in their lives post college and it makes sense! Here’s what I learned after 1 year out.

By the time you graduate college you’ve been in academia for nearly 17 years. You’re institutionalized! School has become a place where you meet new people, eat your food, do pretty much anything. Your life revolves around this firm structure and just like that it’s gone.

You move out of college to the place you’ll living at for the foreseeable future living while working (hopefully) your new job. You may or may not know people who live there. Chances are, you’re essentially starting from zero. Welcome to the real world. I was there and so was everyone else, here’s how I figured it out.

As such, I think it’s important to focus on your Hierarchy of Needs.

• Adjusting to your new life and setting up home
• Meal prepping so you can have routines.
• A Sense of Belonging.

Using these Hierarchy of Needs I’ve made some advice for how to structure life coming out of college and into the real world.

Month 1: Set up home and adjust to your new life

• You’ll spend a lot of time getting used to your new job, new apartment, and the town you live in. By month 1 you should know if you want to stay at your job for the foreseeable future.
• You’ll be really tired after work for the first month or two and it’ll cost you a lot of effort to do anything. Even though you might be working less than you did in college a 9–5 is initially mentally draining.
• Get settled into your apartment! It might take you some time, but once everything is in order it’ll help you a lot mentally. Don’t worry about your spending, these are startup costs and you’ll get this money back with in the first month or two.
• Don’t host friends until you’re comfortable with your job and where you live. You’ll be really stressed and won’t know what to do with them otherwise.

Month 2: Making more time for things that matter

• At this point, you’re noticing your weekday life looks a lot like this:
• Wake up, go to work, come home, cooking, cleaning, misc. chores, 1–2 hours of me time, sleep. Repeat.
• This is really dangerous. You’re coasting and you’re inefficient at it too.
• You want to have more time to yourself so you can focus on recharging or doing a hobby.
• As such, it’s important to meal prep.
• Cook a menu for the week, I find that cooking two types of bulk lunches and bulk dinners works creates enough variety for me. If you have the hardware ( big pans, large airfryer, etc) you should be able to do this in 4 or so hours.
• It’s good to start meal prepping on weekends, but once you get into the flow of cooking certain meals you can do this after work and focus on leisure, hobbies, or partying for weekend.
• Some stores like Trader Joe’s sell cheap healthy-ish frozen foods. You can frozen fruits and veggies, pre-made side dishes and salads. Typically, I cook my own main dishes and then cook side-dishes which uses something from Trader Joe’s as a base.
• Once you don’t have to worry about food, you can now do things with your spare time. Some people block out time on their calendar for hobbies, but that doesn’t work for me…

A thought on Effort:

Effort is the amount of mental energy it will take you to do something.

I’ve found that in life, there’s three currencies: money, time, and above all, effort. Effort is the amount of mental energy it will take you to do something.

For example, you come home from work and it’s late. You’re drained. So doing any more work requires a lot of effort. Thus, if you can afford it, it’s actually cheaper for you to just buy dinner as it gives you more time back for yourself and allows you to regain mental energy.

However during a weekend, time is in abundance and you have more energy, so effort is also cheaper to expend. This allows you to get chores out of the way.

Luckily effort can be fortified by developing habits, being healthy, having the right tools for the job (i.e. dishwasher vs sink & sponge), and having an orderly home.

Month 3: A Sense of Belonging

Sooner or later it can get a little lonely if you’re single or in a long distance relationship (good luck lol).

• The best thing I’ve found is to rekindle college friendships or acquaintances who live next to you.
• If you remember where everyone went you can just reach out to people directly, else you can go on LinkedIn and see where your connections went. See who you know in your town, they may be just as lonely as you are and would be down to catch up!
• If you don’t know anyone in town, it’s going to harder to meet people. Optimize for friendships and try and friends who can get you more people.
• If you’re in the big coastal cities, meetup.com and lu.ma are going to be your go-tos. If you’re in a smaller town there are local Facebook groups, but your best bet is to find community centers where locals post ads for events or classes. Googling communities also helps. In smaller towns, it’s more acceptable to talk to strangers, so don’t be shy.
• If you find yourself a group see if people can add you to the WhatsApp or Discord groups. This is perfect for you as now you have a steady supply of people with your interests!
• While you’re still young, try hanging out at your local University. Figure out which club aligns with your hobbies and see if you can join them! You’ll gain access to a lot of new friends who are around your age.
• Take classes or do hackathons.

As far as post-college relationships go, I don’t recommend starting a new one when you haven’t figured out your own life yet. It’s going to be really hard balancing your three lives (work, personal, relationship).

Month 4–6: Settled In

• At this point you should be nearly settled into your routines and figured out how to live life.
• You’ve developed hobbies or resumed the hobbies you used to do.
• You now know some people who you can hang out with which is exciting because there’s a whole world to explore and things to spend the money you’re working for.
• Sometimes, your routine can get derailed if you get too tired, try and reset or you’ll find that you’ll start to coast and won’t have time for yourself.

I just want to add that while you’re doing all of these things you’ll probably get sad :( but please stay positive.

If you hate your job because of your team, see if you can talk to management and get yourself moved to another team that more aligned with your goals and personality. If you can’t do anything about it, try to focus on life outside of work. Lean into your hobbies and social circles. Have something to look forward to after work.

Don’t listen to music that will bounce back your sadness and your worries or you’ll become a doomer.

A sad and doomer new-grad

Adjusting is tough, talk to your old friends who graduated with you. They’re going through it too. Remember to go outside, touch grass, eat food at nice cafes. Serendipity awaits.

One day a creeping thought will come to you as you’re walking past the potato aisle at the grocery store… What’s my identity? Is this it in life? What’s next for me?

And that my friend is what everyone else is trying to figure out. It’s blind leading the blind out here.