On Meeting Post-Grad Job Expectations
On Meeting Post-Grad Job Expectations

Europe’s youth is known for its love for traveling. Groundbreaking remark: Wanderlust is not just a hipster tattoo on millions of arms and shoulders but an actual word to describe people’s desire to go to different places and just “wander around the world”. Students take a break from college for a semester to interrail through Europe, become an au-pair in the US, work and travel in Australia. Why finish your degree during the standard period of study? Life will put its chains on you sooner or later anyways. And here is where my struggle begins: I want everything possible and all at the same time: Great degree. Successful work. Money. Time for travels.

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Career, Dreams, RelationshipsViviane SchmidtComment
Slowly Drifting
Slowly Drifting

I was at the beach last summer whenever I could have been, because even though everything around me was changing, the way that I felt there never seemed to. It was a temporary escape from all of the things (so many, many things) that I had no idea how to handle, and all of the things that I had no idea how to let go of. Last year was the first time that I ever actually dreaded the summer, because I knew that when it came, everything had to change. Naturally, instead of dealing with these problems head on, I decided “um, no” and completely lost myself there, like I was waiting for a message in a bottle filled with all of the missing answers.

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Life, DreamsAlyssa VottoFeaturedComment
Accepting What You Can't (Immediately) Change
Accepting What You Can't (Immediately) Change

Every day since I’ve graduated, I’ve woken up with the nagging feeling of stagnation. Without school, it’s hard to get through the everyday when you have no real end goal anymore. School is easy in that sense; the end game is of course graduating and then utilizing what you just spent so much time and money attaining. When that end pans out, when even seeing the words “entry-level” or “five years’ experience required” start to haunt you, what is your end goal then?

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Career, Dreams, LifeAnna SpleanFeaturedComment
OUR FAVORITE THINGS: The 1975's "I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it"
OUR FAVORITE THINGS: The 1975's "I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it"

Three years after their self-titled debut album, these British lads have released their second album, I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it. And. I. Love. It. I won’t attempt to convince you to like the album title, but I will attempt to make you love the album itself. Or if not love, at least give it a listen.

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Our Favorite ThingsAlly WillisMusicComment
Nobody Told Me
Nobody Told Me

I didn’t necessarily expect the whole “adult” thing to be easy, but I also didn’t expect it to overwhelm me the way it did. Granted, I was also in a long-distance relationship that was quickly tanking, so that definitely didn’t help me navigate life in the aftermath of graduating. Along with having roommates with very different personalities than mine who brought a tense atmosphere to my home life, post-grad life dropped a whole new concept into my path: being intentional.

Graduating from college changes who you are—one moment you’re a student like you’ve always been, and the next moment you find that your identity has shifted. For me, the combination of a failing relationship, an uncomfortable home life and the loss of the built-in college community I’d had for 3.5 years made for a whirlwind season of life. If you’re not careful, all of a sudden you realize you haven’t seen your friends in two months and Netflix keeps asking you if you’re still watching your show because you fall asleep on the couch every night.

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Graduation, Life, RelationshipsBrittany PrescottFeaturedComment
Put It In Your Back Pocket and Other Lessons I Learned from My Grandmother
Put It In Your Back Pocket and Other Lessons I Learned from My Grandmother

Last summer, my beloved grandmother, Joyce, lost her short but very heartbreaking battle with brain cancer. She was my best friend, and to say that I miss her every day in an understatement; I’d give anything in the entire world to hear her voice or see her smile again. But the lessons I learned from her are what keep me moving forward on the days when all I want to do is fall apart.  

Here are a just few of my favorites.

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Life, RelationshipsMegan RauFeaturedComment
Get Out of Your Own Way
Get Out of Your Own Way

Have you ever had those moments when your thoughts unexpectedly go from a slow, Sunday-driver pace to an absurd, Fast and Furious velocity? This, of course, often happens to me just as I’m peacefully drifting off to sleep.

The most recent time my mind-engine revved was a couple days ago on International Women’s Day, which, to my chagrin, I just found out was a thing. The Google Doodle for the occasion showed women of various cultures and backgrounds finishing the sentence “One day I will…” with their career and life ambitions, and it made me feel inspired and proud, yet simultaneously panicked. After watching the Doodle, the souped-up hot rod in my brain—a Lamborghini, obvi—skipped the first several gears and squealed out of the driveway.

What is my ‘one day I will’ dream? Why don’t I know all of these languages? What if I’ve missed an opportunity—or several— to really pursue my dreams? Am I living up to my potential as a human and a woman? Am I even adulting/womaning correctly?!

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Career, DreamsChristina BergerFeatured, Archive 16Comment
Finding Peace Amidst Changes
Finding Peace Amidst Changes

Some days are harder than others in this post-grad world. Some days I think to myself, “I can and I will do this,” and other days I think about taking some time off from reality and traveling, maybe becoming a flight attendant for a while so I can see new places and still make money doing so.

Then I remember the more time I take off from doing what I want to be doing, the less likely I'm going to land the dream job.

So no, I’m not at peace with where I am.

I'm living at home, I'm beyond broke, I am single for the first time in six years, I don't like working five different jobs that I don't feel challenged at, and I just don't know what to do about it. I apply for jobs constantly, follow up and still get rejection emails and phone calls.

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Career, DreamsJackie MundryComment
On Being Single on Valentine's Day and Being Way Too Sober
On Being Single on Valentine's Day and Being Way Too Sober

I gave up alcohol for Lent. But it turns out, I didn’t give up the reason I normally drink alcohol. This is, of course, due to the fact that my love life is akin to post-meltdown Chernobyl. Lent happened on Ash Wednesday, as Lent does, and I stopped drinking. No happy-hour Shiners, no Friday afternoon margaritas, nothin’. Just iced tea, water, and hot cocoa. Additionally, Ash Wednesday was the day I flew to Texas for a weekend wedding. Now if you know me at all, or even if you don’t, you know that I love my friends, and I love that they have found love, but I often do not love weddings. This is probably because I don’t like wearing dresses. It’s also because weddings are expensive. Especially for bridesmaids. Particularly for Maids of Honor. Groomsmen have it so damn easy: just a bunch of college buddies getting together for a weekend of debauchery, breweries and golf for the bachelor party and then a weekend of wearing a suit they may or may not already own on one Saturday. Groomsmen are the men that will marry you and bury you.

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Life, RelationshipsRachel MallisonFeatured, Archive 16Comment
Finding Answers in Rome
Finding Answers in Rome

On a warm July evening in Rome, after a long day on foot, Kristen and I shared dinner and dessert in one of the quieter corners of the city. Outside of the Italian cafe, at a little two-person table, we rehashed once again all of our wonders, fears and hopes for the years ahead while strangers filtered through unnoticed. Three hours into our conversation, in between sips of my lukewarm cappuccino, I blithely expressed a simple yet powerful intention that would ultimately change the course of my life.

"I'm going to marry that boy."

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Travel, Career, RelationshipsEmily BlasikFeatured, Archive 16Comment
The Road Paved with Disappointment
The Road Paved with Disappointment

About a month ago, I was driving to downtown Franklin, Tennessee with a friend and spilling my fearful, panicking guts from the passenger’s seat. I had just received news that I would not be getting a job I had spent three interviews preparing to accept. I was rundown and disappointed, feeling lost in the jungle of post-graduation.

“You should just drive across the country,” she said lightheartedly, and laughter ensued. Drive across the country, what an absurd idea. But then the joke got taken one step too far and all of a sudden we were plotting about who would pay my rent for a month and where I could stop to stay the night in Oklahoma and Arizona and California. Suddenly, I was calling my parents and asking if I would still be allowed to come home for Christmas if I made a rather (arguably) reckless decision and drove my tired, thirteen-year-old car across the country. (It took some negotiation but I am, indeed, still allowed to come home.) We sat in a coffee shop for an hour and hammered out the plan and concluded that there really wouldn’t be one, that sometimes you have to take a leap, whether or not it looks like a promising landing, and whether or not people are going to speculate about where your mind might have run off to.

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Dreams, Life, CareerChelsey SatterleeFeatured, Archive 16Comment
Now & Then: Advice to Your Past and Future Self
Now & Then: Advice to Your Past and Future Self

Because I’m still not over the fact that a new year has already fallen upon us (and I’m also not over the fact that it’s been almost a year since we graduated… NO),  I still can’t help but reflect on 2015 out of the pure shock that it’s behind us now. What a major year this was for me: I (somehow) graduated college, moved into an apartment, got a big-girl job and experienced infinite laughs, loves, let-downs and lessons. So like every other year before this one, I found myself mentally making a list of all of the things I wanted to change about myself after the ball dropped. Past resolutions include eating healthier, exercising more, volunteering more, everything you've already heard before and everything I never actually do, etc.

But then I started wondering; if I could go back, to 2015 or 2014 or 2011 or 2006, what would I tell myself then?

In the end, would I have done it any different?

So I decided to put my senior-year newspaper class experience to the test and use my hard-hitting journalism skills (just pretend…) to ask the same question to those around me: What would you tell your past self?

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Life, Dreams, GraduationAlyssa VottoFeaturedComment
Do As I Say, Not As I Do: 5 Tips for Traveling Abroad
Do As I Say, Not As I Do: 5 Tips for Traveling Abroad

As a person with admittedly limited wisdom, I was initially shocked and delighted at the idea of my words being featured on any type of public medium. After all, I’m only 22 and survived a day and a half of Girl Scout camp, rendering me totally unwise. How many people, disregarding relatives and my therapist, could possibly care about my tales of adventure and woe? 

With that being said, That First Year has been my first experience with blog writing and after each completed post I continue asking myself if I’m saying anything that actually matters. Although my life got reasonably more exciting once I decided to spend the year before graduate school traveling, I didn’t know if it was fodder for blogging gold. While that gold part is debatable, I realized I have a lot to say. Not just about “figuring it all out,” but about some pretty big advice. Namely: what to do (or not do) when you decide to travel. From five months abroad, let me spell out my greatest learning lessons along the way. Traveling has been wildly fun and a little glamorous in the times when I haven’t been dining at a South American KFC, but if anything, my experiences are a constant serving of humble pie.    

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TravelKelsey WorshamFeatured, Archive 16Comment
An Open Letter to the Man Who Kicked Me Out of A Bar
An Open Letter to the Man Who Kicked Me Out of A Bar

My friends and I were having a lovely time. Laughing and dancing with passion only Usher’s songs can inspire, we were savoring our last night together. I don’t remember the DJ’s name (forgive me, friend), but I do remember that he provided my requested track ("Confessions Part II").

You left your lonely grouping of empty cocktail glasses and sleek liquor bottles to approach us.

“Who are you?” you demanded, assuming the classic position of a member of the “good 'ole boys club" - the power stance.

“Who are you?” I countered, less-than-amused at your question and tone which surpassed Eliza Dolittle’s false superiority upon her first entrance into high society.

“My family owns the Cowboys,” was your response to the question, but to me it felt like the punchline to a lackluster joke.

With all of the defiance I could muster, I countered, “And what do you do?”

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LifeLaurel DicusFeatured, Archive 16 Comment