What the first few months feel like after graduating unemployed
Written By: Gen Nguyen | Read full profile
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Joke of the blog: What do you call an angry balloon?
It’s a hot, summer day in Texas, July 2020. Actually it’s a hot, summer day every day in Texas. I’m unemployed, and I no longer go to school so my daily schedule looks like this:
- Wake up at noon
- Get ready for my day (shower, brush my teeth, etc.)
- Eat lunch
- Go to work (video editing, filming, writing, etc.)
- Late afternoon nap
- Work more
- Procrastinate a little bit (play pokemon, smash bros, animal crossing, eat, watch youtube, etc.)
- Work a little more
- Go home around 9-10pm
- Eat dinner
- Watch Friends
- Stay up til 3-4am because of my insomnia and the way college has conditioned me to sleep
- Repeat 1-12
I graduated college and have been home for two months now (four if you count moving back home because of the pandemic). And I can’t help but think that I’m missing something.
Have I finished my assignment for Government yet? Have I turned in my lab report for organic chemistry lab? When is the deadline for Fall registration?
Sometimes I have to remind myself that I graduated so unnecessary thoughts like these don’t haunt me in my dreams and every waking moment of my summer “staycation” as I scramble for a job. And if I still don’t believe that I graduated, I have to look at the grad picture I took (on the homepage of our website). Looking at my diploma helps too, but it also reminds me that I’ve graduated with no job and no higher education.
Tenor Gif
Usually every summer, I’m doing something productive whether it’s working at a job that pays me decent money, studying for classes, or prepping for the GRE. This is the first time in 4 years (since I graduated high school) that I’ve been home for longer than two weeks. Recently, I had a dream that I had to take my AP Stats exam and was panicking because I only had one day to study for it - definitely something my young, high school self would do. College forced me to study days (maybe even weeks if I had time) in advance.
But, anyways, I woke up in the middle of the night (or early morning for you early birds) at 5:30 am thinking if I had an upcoming exam to take or if there was something important I almost forgot to do. 16 years of schooling has traumatized me to believe that I have upcoming deadlines that I am forgetting.
So, that’s what the first few months of graduating and chilling at home has felt like for me: a freshly unemployed bum.
For anybody who is wondering, yes I am looking for jobs, going through application processes. But I’m hoping that this business takes off so I don’t have to deal with a 9-5 job that I don’t like! Your support is much appreciative, so thanks for sticking around to the end!
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Answer: A hot air balloon
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