One year ago today (it would’ve been if I hadn’t procrastinated this post, shut up), I experienced the biggest change of my life, to date. Every single day until May 13, 2022 had held at least some formatting, or promise of things to do tomorrow. But not that day. An entire lifetime felt like it was suddenly coming to an end, and… it was. That life, the one that I knew, was now over.
It’s been over now for one year, and I like to think that in that year, I’ve picked up a few things worth knowing, and more than a few things worth un-knowing. With so many of my closest friends starting their own experiences with the all-too-terrifying “real world,” I thought I’d write down some of each of those.
1. Some People Have It Figured Out, Some Don’t, But Most Are Just Faking It.
Look, your engineer friends are an exception. Those losers are making bank of the bombing of developing nations. Let them cash in before they have to answer for it at the pearly gates.
Your business friends though? They’re just better at LinkedIn than you are.
Trust me, I understand more than most how difficult it can be to try to answer the “so what job do you have lined up?” questions at your grad party. The thing is, it’s an extreme rarity that anyone is exactly excited to answer that question. No matter what they say, nobody is “Extremely excited for this opportunity at Faceless, Nameless, & Soulless Inc.!”
First jobs suck. You’re overworked, underpaid, and it’s not really what you even wanted to be doing. How the hell did you even get here? Are you stupid? Why are all of your peers doing so much better than you are?
I promise, they’re not. If they are, good for them, but that’s not the majority. I have plenty of friends who are on their second job out of college in under a year, myself included, and plenty more who are actively looking. It is okay to be wrong, it is okay to quit, and it is okay to not like what you’re doing.
You’re 22. You have absolutely no business being (or thinking you are) right all the time. You’re going to mess up, and you’re going to do it often. Some might even say that’s the entire point of your 20s. Some of the best advice I’ve heard is:
2. Throw Some Shit At The Wall, Something Just Might Stick.
Interestingly enough, some of the better advice I’ve heard about being in your 20s came from Rainn Wilson, a.k.a. that guy who played Dwight from the office and was in “The Meg.” I’m paraphrasing because I don’t feel like hunting down the clip, but it was roughly:
Your 20s are the time to try 100 things, and fail at 99 of them.
Dwight Shrute, but not actually
It’s difficult to overstate how good this advice is. From the date of your graduation forward, your life is yours in a way it never has been before. That’s a huge liability if you’re anything like me, but it also has the potential to be the opportunity of a lifetime.
You’re now in a position where you’ve (hopefully) taken the past four years to figure out the kind of person you want to be (and if not, maybe that can be a few of your 100 things). It’s time to go off and see what that person can really do when put to the test.
What are you going to afford your time to? What creative outlet do you see being the most beneficial for yourself? Is there a hobby you’ve been putting off? What is your adult decor style/aesthetic (hopefully you’re past the empty liquor bottles)? Who are you going to prioritize? How are you going to make time for you between your social calendar and work obligations?
You might not have the answers to these yet, and that’s great. Start trying things out, see what you like, and you never know what might come up. Still those things will only come about when you can:
3. Be Radically Intentional
This may seem obvious, but it wasn’t to me: the full realization of intentionality in your day to day life takes a shocking amount and prolonged period of mental energy.
One indisputable drawback of adult life is that you are about to have less time than you’ve ever had in your entire life. That is just a fact, I don’t care how busy you were in college, you’re about to have less time. Whether you’re looking at Law School, your first 9-5 (or more, Wall Street bros), or just your newfound social calendar, you are going to be seeing a lot less of… you.
This leaves little or often even time for thinking, planning, and checking in with that ever elusive person you spend 100% of your time with. This makes every moment crucial, as corny as that may sound.
It is so painfully and depressingly easy to let your fleeting free time dissipate into the milieu of modern life. Social media scrolling, Netflix binging, and the like are a time-sink that the part of us that just wants to, and perhaps deserves to, relax so easily slides into when we aren’t paying attention.
What you need to remember is some basic math: without factoring in a single other thing, you are already only looking at 72 hours per week of time that’s actually yours in a meaningful way (outside of work and sleep), and that’s not factoring in a commute, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, and the countless other things you don’t want to do but you do, unfortunately, have to do to continue living.
Based on my experience, this number is actually more like 52, weekends included. That’s 4 hours a day on weekdays, and runs with the assumption that your weekends are actually all yours (not true). In case you were wondering, that is not a lot of time.
So, how’re you gonna spend it? The answer to this question, I’m not joking, is going to define your life.
If there is one piece of advice I want to impart upon you, it is that nothing matters quite so much as getting your routine right.
Your mental health, physical health, spiritual health, social life, etc. etc. of important realms of life, depend on your answer to that question. And so, so many people do not even consider it, let alone answer it.
Despite what the romantic in me wants to tell you, you have to be pragmatic about your life. A life is not the sum of its biggest moments; at best you might get 20 or 30 of those over the span of your 80 or whatever years on this earth. The life that you live will be composed instead of the sum of its smallest parts; those little, teeny minutiae that you rarely stop to consider.
Take some time to think about the habits you want for yourself. Do you want to go to the gym? How about eating healthy? Do you want to cook for yourself? If not, how will you budget around eating out? Should saving be a priority? (Yes it should, please google the rule of 72, open a Roth IRA, and set up a recurring deposit to save at a minimum 10% of your income. If you need help doing this, please text me. Thank me when you’re 65). What are your financial goals? Is your romantic life a priority right now? Should it be? What relationships do I want to maintain? What can I do to maintain those relationships? Do I actually do those things I claim as hobbies? If not, why not, and how can I put more time into those? What are my career goals? Is there anything I can do, outside of work, to advance those? Is religion a priority for me? Am I a spiritual person? Should I be one? What spiritual practice helps connect me to myself and my higher power?
The habits you form in your day to day can all contribute to answering these questions, which I hope you’d agree are fairly important. One thing is absolutely certain: they will not answer themselves. Not to get religious, but the Bible does have a few good points, and one of my favorites is:
4. Seek, And Ye Shall Find
This is one of my favorite lines ever, because in five words so much is packed in.
Seek is not an insignificant word here. Seeking isn’t accidental, or wandering aimlessly. Seeking as an intentionally undertaken, lifelong pursuit of something. Even if that something isn’t known (though sometimes it definitely is), seeking is the process of aiming with intention.
You will never, ever hit something you aren’t aiming for. There are those rare people who are lucky; that person in your life who always seems to be happy no matter what and has never had a bad day, they might actually sometimes hit things they weren’t aiming for. But, by and by, you are not going to be given much of anything by way of luck, so I’d recommend putting down the lottery ticket when that dream job you landed starts looking more like a nightmare.
Take some time and think about what it is you really, really want. What’s the end goal? What’s the point of it all? Why are you here instead of not here? You exist for a reason. What is it?
Rome wasn’t built in a day, so don’t give yourself an existential crisis thinking about it. You piece together the bits of this question one day at a time, and you do so by saying to yourself, “you know, I think I should be pursuing X. I’m going to start making concrete steps toward attaining X.” Again, these things might seem obvious, but it gets easier every day to forget that you ever had goals and dreams. Don’t let go of those, and make a plan to achieve them.
A friend I asked for some input on this article also contributed this, which I think belongs here:
“Remember that the best parts of life are out there, but you have to be willing to seek them out. Practically, I think it means the following: discern he aspects of life you enjoy, then seek out those things. I’ll give a quick example. By far, one of my favorite parts of life are having great conversations with others. And I was so spoiled [at Villanova]. I had a dozen people around me the past four years who all had something interesting to say and ask. I was hungry for more of that, so, when I went home, I grabbed “We’re Not Really Strangers” (Jack’s note: this is a card game, I highly recommend it) Turns out, I not only played it with friends, but the conversation lasted, even after I’d left.” – Jason (thanks pal <3)
I agree wholeheartedly with this. Speaking as someone who moved to Montana on a whim, you’re not going to find the things you want in life without going and getting them. So, get after it. Take ownership of your life; go and seek.
5. Get Comfortable Being Alone
Sorry, no fun transition. My friend Grace’s contribution to my request for advise inspired this section, so I’ll lead with her advice:
“Point 1: I learned to get comfortable in the alone 0me. I learned to be flexible but to also create routine for myself. I learned that making a few new friends is better than making a lot of new acquaintances. I learned that I’m never as alone as I feel.
Point 2: Make your alone time intentional. When I find myself alone by no choice of my own, I get kind of sad and lonely. But when I choose to go for a walk, to go to the gym, to go to the grocery store, to do my skincare routine, then I appreciate the alone me. I come out of it wanting more. Because it’s in the alone time that you learn to care for yourself. So make your alone time intentional.”
I think this is tremendous advice. Another unfortunate piece of postgrad life is that you’re going to be alone a lot more. Having a roommate helps with this for obvious reasons, but even so, there’s going to be a sort of wicked hangover from going to the most socially active period of your entire life, to, in many cases including my own, being more alone than you’ve ever been.
That sounds scary, and I won’t lie to you: it is a little. Granted, I lived in Montana so there were only like 5 people, but there were days I swear I didn’t speak to another living human being. I’d never experienced that before, and it definitely got to me.
The difference between the good days and bad days of being alone was always just going to do something. Like Grace said, it can be as simply as knocking out the weekly grocery store trip or going for a walk. You’re an adult now, and you’ve got shit to do. You don’t have time for self pity, and honestly, that’s a good thing. It’s fine to be sad, but self pity is always a waste of time. Put some shoes on and go buy dinner. It helps a shocking amount of the time.
Of course, there were also days I climbed mountains, and I’d recommend doing some of that to (even if your version is taking the subway to that trendy part of town your friends keep cancelling plans to go to. Just go do something cool! You’re an adult, you can buy yourself an ice cream cake for no reason if you really want. The world is your oyster!).
6. On Leaving Villanova
I was trying to keep this a bit more esoteric, but given both my experience and my target audience, this is more than applicable.
Leaving Villanova is… tough.
In all likelihood, none of us will ever be somewhere quite so great, around people quite so amazing, as we were at Villanova.
This, to me, and to many of my friends, has been the most difficult part of post-grad life. The existential hangover that is leaving Villanova is rougher than any dished out to me by a fifth of Pink Whitney.
That said, there comes a time in all of our lives that we have to grow up. That’s sad, but it’s also a good thing. I think this is something we all know, deep down, even if it’s tough to accept. There’s a reason everyone makes fun of that fifth-year frat guy, and the weird older couple that goes to Kelly’s to reminisce.
I’ve tried to write this section out a few different ways, and haven’t been able to outdo what my friend Grace said, so I will defer to her:
“Villanova is the most special place in the world. You’re going to miss it. It’s okay to be disappointed when postgrad isn’t as special as villanova. But it’ll always be there to visit. And the people who entered your heart there will remain forever. Most importantly, you carry villanova with you everyday. Because the person that you became there, in that special place, is so good. The person you became there will carry you through the good and the bad for the rest of your life.”
Leaving Villanova was the hardest thing I ever had to do, but in all the most meaningful ways, I still have it. My closest friends are all still in active contact. The person Villanova helped me to become still wakes up every morning, seeking to make himself better, learn new things, and find the person he wants to become. I have Villanova to thank for that, and at a year out, I’m more proud now than ever to have been a Wildcat.
Closing Remarks
To my friends graduating tomorrow, congratulations. I really, sincerely mean that. When you’re smart, as all of my lovely readers are, academic accomplishments can sometimes feel a little less accomplishment-y than they actually are. I want you to really consider for a moment how special it is that you were able to graduate from one of the better schools in the country. Not many people have a bachelor’s degree, and even less have one from such a good school. What you did is special, it took immense effort, and you should be so sincerely proud of yourself for doing it.
I also want to offer you an open line of communication. I’m here for all of you, day and night. I fuck up a lot, but I also make an active effort to think about and learn from every mistake I make. I like to think that’s worth something, and if nothing else it might be worth it to you to maybe not make the same mistake. Please, even if you think we aren’t close enough for an individual text, reach out to me if you need advice. I love talking about life, and am more than happy to help, so give me a call.
I tried to frame much of the advice in this post as questions. That was very intentional. I’m not here to tell you how to live your life. So much of post-graduate life is simply asking and being asked the right questions. It is my hope that some of the above questions can help you to interface with the world in a more meaningful way, and to really take the time to consider your life. It would mean the world to me if I could play even a small role in helping you do so.
Finally, thank you to Jason & Grace for contributing to this post as well. You two are likely the wisest people I have had the blessing to know, and I’m thankful that your thoughts were added to this post, even if I didn’t include 100% of them I appreciated and adapted many of the other things, hopefully in ways that captured the spirit of what you said.
Song of the Week:
The Line 
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