Life After Grad School
Happy news. I graduated in May and I haven't posted about anything, so here comes my life after grad school post. My graduation weekend was unlike anything other. I graduated on May 21st, 2016, the day after my birthday. I turned 25 and then the day after I graduated with my MSW. It was going to be the happiest and most eventful weekend during the summer and then....I got hand foot and mouth disease! It is a children's disease but I guess I got it from my internship. I don't recommend getting if you ever have the choice :)
Nonetheless, graduation happened and then my post school life began.
I had the summer off and had plenty of time to travel and go to Girls Camp and the Stake Youth Trek. I finished my year off at my internship and then enjoyed the summer. We went to Hawaii for a week and explored the main island. We hiked, visited the volcano, soaked up the sun on beaches, snorkled with sea turtles, ate fish and looked at waterfalls. It was the perfect way to celebrate the ending of grad school.
I accepted a job offer for a school district and have been working there since August. I love my job and I have felt like I have grown from my supervision and time with my students.
Life after grad school has been wonderful and I still kinda miss being in school. It is a hard transition from being a full time student and intern to a working professional but there have been lots of benefits.
Being a intern you are given more leeway and when you start your first job, you realize that it is the time to prove that you can do it after completing your internships! At first you feel like it's wonderful because you are doing that studied to do, and then you realize that you are not perfect and still have so much to learn. I felt so overwhelmed the first couple of weeks of introducing myself as a MSW when I felt like such a newbie. Another thing that took some time was learning about the structure of your organization, moving jobs was a little stressful, trying to understand how the new agency worked.The more you get used to your new agency, the more you feel comfortable.
I recently went to a friends house from the program to catch up since we haven't really seen each other since graduation. We were all talking about life after graduation and we talked about how there was some disappointment and loneliness. It's so crazy that after one of your biggest accomplishments, you think to yourself "now what?". You just reached one of your goals of graduating and then you have to restart your life and create a new routine. Your routine of reading, writing a paper, going to class, going to internship, trying to sleep and have a social life in between the rest of your daily activities is gone. You have to recreate yourself as your identity as a student is gone!
Another general theme was disconnectedness from my friends. Life after graduation, you feel disconnected from people as you start working in your occupation. Being a student and intern, you were always around people and around your friends in your program. Then all the sudden, you go to work and then you go home. You are tired after work, so you watch netflix. You go to bed and repeat. The battle to become connected with others is hard once you start your new job and feel overwhelmed. It was great to reconnect with them and see that our experiences were similar.
Overall, I have enjoyed life after grad school. It isn't as I have expected, but when does life go as you planned? There is always the joke of telling God you're plans, he will just laugh and say, "I hope she is ready for this curveball".
I enjoy the free time I have (I didn't know what to do with all of it before). I enjoy working with my coworkers and learning from them. I enjoy the fact that I don't have mandatory reading (I'm starting to read for fun again). I enjoy having time to actually do my hobbies! I enjoy having a real paycheck instead of doing unpaid internships. So, life after grad school has been great :)
Nonetheless, graduation happened and then my post school life began.
I had the summer off and had plenty of time to travel and go to Girls Camp and the Stake Youth Trek. I finished my year off at my internship and then enjoyed the summer. We went to Hawaii for a week and explored the main island. We hiked, visited the volcano, soaked up the sun on beaches, snorkled with sea turtles, ate fish and looked at waterfalls. It was the perfect way to celebrate the ending of grad school.
I accepted a job offer for a school district and have been working there since August. I love my job and I have felt like I have grown from my supervision and time with my students.
Life after grad school has been wonderful and I still kinda miss being in school. It is a hard transition from being a full time student and intern to a working professional but there have been lots of benefits.
Being a intern you are given more leeway and when you start your first job, you realize that it is the time to prove that you can do it after completing your internships! At first you feel like it's wonderful because you are doing that studied to do, and then you realize that you are not perfect and still have so much to learn. I felt so overwhelmed the first couple of weeks of introducing myself as a MSW when I felt like such a newbie. Another thing that took some time was learning about the structure of your organization, moving jobs was a little stressful, trying to understand how the new agency worked.The more you get used to your new agency, the more you feel comfortable.
I recently went to a friends house from the program to catch up since we haven't really seen each other since graduation. We were all talking about life after graduation and we talked about how there was some disappointment and loneliness. It's so crazy that after one of your biggest accomplishments, you think to yourself "now what?". You just reached one of your goals of graduating and then you have to restart your life and create a new routine. Your routine of reading, writing a paper, going to class, going to internship, trying to sleep and have a social life in between the rest of your daily activities is gone. You have to recreate yourself as your identity as a student is gone!
Another general theme was disconnectedness from my friends. Life after graduation, you feel disconnected from people as you start working in your occupation. Being a student and intern, you were always around people and around your friends in your program. Then all the sudden, you go to work and then you go home. You are tired after work, so you watch netflix. You go to bed and repeat. The battle to become connected with others is hard once you start your new job and feel overwhelmed. It was great to reconnect with them and see that our experiences were similar.
Overall, I have enjoyed life after grad school. It isn't as I have expected, but when does life go as you planned? There is always the joke of telling God you're plans, he will just laugh and say, "I hope she is ready for this curveball".
I enjoy the free time I have (I didn't know what to do with all of it before). I enjoy working with my coworkers and learning from them. I enjoy the fact that I don't have mandatory reading (I'm starting to read for fun again). I enjoy having time to actually do my hobbies! I enjoy having a real paycheck instead of doing unpaid internships. So, life after grad school has been great :)
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