As graduation is just around the corner, many of us are excited to be done with our university education and look forward to culminating all of our hard work with the commencement ceremonies.
As much as we are proud of our accomplishments during our college years, we are also wary of the impact of the economic crisis on our future careers.
After going through years of hearing how the job hunt will be difficult from both professors and professionals, we are anxious about facing a future that is uncertain.
Many of us are wondering if we will be able to get the job we have been studying for. More importantly, when we do find work, will we be able to afford to sustain the job?
Many of us are going to be paying off student debt along with rent and other bills. We want to find jobs that allow our creative and critical thinking skills we learned during our college years to flourish, but fear these skills may be harnessed by the corporate world.
There are some of us who are considering moving out of California to find work, and there are a few of us who wonder if we can find work in the media world at all. Some of us will be entering the “real world” and living outside of home for the first time. Others have lived on their own, relying on either full-time work and/or financial aid along with loans to sustain us through our college education.
For those of us who have worked for a living during school, our biggest post-graduation fear is being offered an entry-level position within a company based on our recent graduation status.
After the financial crisis hit, few of us reevaluated our goals and aspirations in life. We balanced work and school (or went back to school) in hopes of going for the career of our dreams. Instead of waiting on tables or being stuck in a corporate cubicle all day, we wanted more out of our lives and careers.
Now, we are going to be faced with the conflict of getting paid to do what we love or getting paid so we can pay off our debt and bills.
For those of us who have not worked for a living just yet, we do not know what to expect. All we know is we have to learn to be self-sufficient and enter the working world cautiously with an open mind.
As the graduating class of 2012, we are thankful we can leave school before tuition increases once more. However, we are concerned about the increasing costs of school will have on our generation, as well as future generations.
We are concerned about the quality of the CSU system all across the board. Will incoming students have the opportunities we had?
Are there students out there too scared off by the 318 -percent increase of tuition the past decade of the CSU system to even try to make their way through school?
In addition, graduate school may be option for those of us who want to continue our education to reach our goals (or avoid paying off student loans); however, now that graduation loans are no longer being granted, we may not be able to take that next step in our careers.
We are fortunate to have made it this far, and we see ourselves being successful in some kind of capacity.
At this point, it is just a matter of whether or not we can make a living off of using our creative minds and critical thinking skills to the fullest in our career or if we will have to slave away at a job we hate just to survive. Of course, many of us hope for the former instead of the latter.
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