I’m Giving Up on the Fantasy of a “Dream Job”
That’s the state of post-graduate trauma that many of us are currently living with these days
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Growing up as kids in America, we were influenced and molded by this notion of landing our “dream job” once we graduated from college.
At a very young age, we were placed on an idealized path to success and all we had to do was get good grades in school, get into a good college, and graduate with a decent GPA. After that, it’s up to us to find whatever that dream job was and thrive.
Sounds simple enough, right? Well, those of us who are post-grads should all know that this is so much easier said than done.
Looking back at my undergraduate days — which has now been almost a decade ago — I was just living for the experience throughout a majority of it. The harsh reality of actually choosing a major and embarking on a journey to land a job within my chosen field didn’t dawn on me until my junior year of college.
And at that point, I was just hoping to finish school in the four-year timeline that I told myself I would. The thought of eventually choosing a career, let alone a career I actually liked, hadn’t even occurred to me.
When I finally graduated from college in the four-year time goal that I initially set out for myself, I then had a new goal. That goal was to land a job…any job.
I later realized that the mirage of adulthood that were my college years hadn’t actually prepared me for the real world. It didn’t prepare me for finding my dream job. At the time, I didn’t even know what my dream job looked like. And how could I? I was barely old enough to buy my own alcohol.
The notion of a dream job that we were led to believe early on in our youth now seemed like rose-colored glasses that we were forced to wear up until the day they were ripped off of our faces once we took our diplomas home.
All of a sudden, the notion became so far-fetched. One could even say fantastical — a pipe dream. Now, even after an entire decade after graduating from college, I still have no idea what my “dream job” looks like to me. And I’m not sure I ever will.
