POST GRAD PANIC: i know you feel it too

“But I’ve never known anything else...”

Seventeen, twenty-one, am I done?

When I graduated high school in June of 2021, I felt this mutual presence that neither myself or the world ahead were prepared for each other. I was navigating a shift away from a life I have always known with the same people, expectations, limits, and identity.

My family and I looked forward to the four years ahead at Cal State Fullerton despite my zero clue about Public Relations or what I was going to do with it. My dad gave me my sister’s old Volkswagen Jetta to pair with my fresh drivers license, I quit my job as Taco Bell cashier, became my town’s pageant princess, grew into a serious relationship, started a small picnic business, and learned to hit the ground running. A lot of change for a seventeen-year-old summer right?

The truth is, my freshman year of college, I did not do well with change. I could not learn well in person post-COVID, I struggled with exhaustion from commuting two hours every morning, and I barely knew what I was doing and who I was becoming. The good news was that I spent a lot of time with my first mentor, I began making my own social media posts, and I drowned in distraction from all of the first-generation blues I felt.

Oh, There’s more?

As if this experience did not expand my world enough, the summer before junior year I decided to study abroad in Barcelona. I applied to the program secretly without telling my parents and writing an essay on being the first in family to travel over seas and what that would mean to us.

While my world at home came crashing weeks before I left, a new world would be built in the soil of Spain and presence of Portugal’s sun. I learned to adapt to new cultures, tried new food, truly danced for the first time in years, cornered into independence, and gained several emotional intelligence points.

While the first two years of college felt blurry, fast, and barely influential, this summer primed a skill of being present, grateful, and softly in-the-moment. I knew when I came back that I would take on a leadership role, apply for internships, and it hit me that this might have been the last “free summer” in my career.

During this time, I felt ironically behind while I watched everyone intern at incredible places and these thoughts overwhelmed me. I took a moment to reflect that the same way my path led me here, it would lead me to where I needed to go next. Boy was I right.

But i have never known anything else…

I have skimmed through my last four years without mentioning the hours of internships, commuting, sleeplessness, and all of the above. I have provided a small lens into my college life to share that as much as I have grown and experienced beautifully complicated things, I have never known anything else, so what do I do now?

The post-grad panic is quick-approaching with conversations of future plans, a changing political landscape, and increasing pressure. These are things every graduate has experienced, but as a first-generation Latina who continues to master the art of figuring it out, this is a tough one.

I never say no and jump at the opportunity to take on another thing despite having enough to manage, but I have never known anything else.

I cannot sit still on my free time before a fight or flight kicks in, but I have never known anything else.

I never come to my parents and conflicts with problems and learn to figure it out as I go, but I have never known anything else.

I never doubt that I will end up in the right place where I need to be despite the panic…

And thank God I have never known anything else.

AND THEN THE WORLD GREW…

The first time I worked New York Fashion Week.

There is nothing that gets a young creative going the way a Times Square fashion show and plane catching thrill does. After I molded better into the real world, I was re-shaped into an early opportunity to be more than I was when my mentor invited me to work for her New York Fashion Week event. All I can say is that the world multiplied in size, possibilities, and fears.

I remember lying in my hotel bed crying because I missed my parents, I had never traveled alone, and I kept telling myself to trust the process. I was learning to balance school work at the same time, missed a lot of classes, and gained incredible industry experience. I struggled to feel involved on campus, had zero friends at school, and I was not a part of anything special. This experience was the first time I felt proud to be a part of something beyond the county lines of my home.

When you only commute to campus for class, barely feel connected while you are there, and still wonder if you are pursuing the right thing, that can become deflating very quickly. When you are in your dream city, eighteen, sitting at the desired table, able to comment, and take on thicker skin? That can be exhilarating. I enjoyed the fine line.

Thank you to 2022’s February for the first big needle in my college fabric.

they say lifelong friends are made in college…

My professional and personal life changed when I joined a student pre-professional organization on campus. At Public Relations Student Society of America, Cal State Fullerton chapter, I met some of my closest friends.

I used to fear that the communications and marketing field would be impossible to foster friendships in because of its competitive nature until I met a group of girls who shared the same internships, sent each other application links, and remained vulnerable in their hiring struggles.

To be a woman navigating a career during this time can feel deflating, confusing, and sometimes conflicting. If you have a supportive friend group that genuinely cares about your personal and professional growth, girlhood is not so scary anymore.

Despite being a year younger, the best seed sprouted from my college career has been the connections I have made across these friendships. I look back at my freshmen year where I felt cold, alone, isolated, and misunderstood to surface gratitude of the environment I am in now.