How to Succeed After College

Three years ago today, I envisioned that 2018 would consist of finishing a Master’s degree and beginning a Ph.D. program in Theology and Christian Ethics en route to becoming a professor of Christian Ethics at a prestigious university’s divinity school. 

Two months ago, I envisioned that 2018 and the few years following would consist of a teaching stint that would last a few years at least. However, I recently resigned from my teaching role amid physical and mental heath issues. 

Subverted Expectations

I had always thought I would be an academic for my entire life. This is the advice that my professors and mentors gave me, a Bible & Theology major, as my plans post-grad began to come into focus (and, frankly, it is what made the most sense given that I did not have a pressing call to the ministry and was good at the academic side of my major).

In university, you have navigated the balance between picking a major of which your parents, the world, and your passions approve. This is surely a struggle. How often have you heard, “I really wanted to major in Finance, but my parents made me major in Theatre.” Exactly.

While in college, the mantra is generally universal: once you graduate, you should do whatever you are passionate about, as long as it makes you enough money to live (and pay off the debt you incurred by coming here).

The problem with this mantra is that university does not train its students’ passions. It assumes that their passions have been properly trained by their upbringing, which, if we’re honest, is a tad ridiculous.

So the struggle after college becomes to satisfy everyone’s expectations, including one’s own. This ruins perhaps the most beautiful spot of one’s life–pure potentiality, more mature than the freshmen, a terrible résumé, and a bucketload of debt, beautiful… right?

To make up for this, the university outsources their commencement address to someone who gives them completely garbage advice: be true to yourself, listen to your inner voice, follow your passions, and your future is limitless. Oh and not to forget the commencement speeches that remind us how important it is to fail–teaching us that success is just a kind of failure, leading to great success stories like that of Steve Jobs. Well, failure is great if you are Steve Jobs. The rest of us should strive for success and avoid failure at all costs.

What will Happen?

From the day you graduate, no one will be paid to read your writing or listen to your seminar contributions. The closest you will get is someone being paid to listen to you ramble on about yourself during an interview.

You will likely not end up in the first job you picked since the first year out of college will be flooded with uncertainty and long periods of loneliness. This is no surprise to those who have been there.

You will see many of your friends get engaged, married, have kids, and seem to have it all figured out. This is an Instagram lie. No one has things figured out at this age.

How to Succeed After College

Step 1: Order your loves. Find your priorities and order them. Figure out what is most important to you and be honest with yourself in the process. Run this list by someone older and wiser than you. Listen to their advice, seriously.

Step 2: Test your loves. David Brooks says to “test your loves with reality.” This is part of ordering your loves. Let yourself go into fields where you can use your highest loves, and if those do not work, reorder them.

Step 3: Sample new loves. Try things in which you never thought you would succeed. Integrate them into your loves. Learn to love these new things.

Step 4: Make commitments; do not keep your options open. Sheer freedom is the path to disarray.

Step 5: Land your freedoms in a structure that can support you and your loves. Make commitments in such a way that humbles you and makes you realize that true love is found outside yourself–it is transcendent.

Step 6: Learn the inverse logic of love. This is the logic that a parent operates when they reason that they would die for their child. It is the logic that governs that finding yourself involves losing yourself. As Brooks says, governs how success leads to the greatest failure–pride; failure leads to the greatest success–learning. Greatness leads to weakness and weakness leads to greatness.

So, strive to be weak and great in the right ways. Savor reflective moments. Pursue maturity.