OPINION: Graduation, a lesson in patience

LETICIA CEZÁRIO SANTOS Marketing Director

We’re here. Our last issue of the semester. Our last issue of this volume. But for many of us, myself included, the last issue of our time at The Oakland Post.

In less than a month, we’ll walk across the stage, and everything will change. We will graduate. What now?

For me, big life moments always make me reflect back on all the experiences I lived through up to now.

Remarkable moments are the trigger for a detailed internal summary and reflection. From my graduation-themed reflection, I want to share what stuck out the most to me: patience.

“Graduation from college marks an important milestone in life. It is a time to celebrate achieving a seminal life goal while leaving behind a formative stage in life,” Joshua Wilt, Wiebke Bleidorn and William Revelle said in their article “Finding a Life Worth Living: Meaning in Life and Graduation from College.”

While we go through our college years knowing graduating is the final step, we don’t spend time thinking about what graduating will truly mean.

“Graduation marks the ending of a structured period in one’s life,” a Montana State University article said. “During the past four+ years, students experienced some certainty in their lives.”

College years sum up life in schedules, syllabi, community and a life dynamic we get quickly used to. Struggles we know — happy moments we certainly can expect.

“College can be similar to a utopian society: Its inhabitants are not really aware of the struggles that may await when that utopian world vanishes the day after graduation.”

After graduation, a lot changes. While for now, I can only guess what this might look like, I know for sure it will be a moment with a lot to unpack.

“With the close of university life also come new beginnings and challenges associated with taking on a more adult role in society,” Wilt, Bleidorn and Revelle said. “Graduation, when conceived of as a developmental task, also can be seen as a transition to adulthood.”

Wilt, Bleidorn and Revelle emphasize how society “explicitly and implicitly urges young adults to get a life,” and here comes my first observation.

Be patient with life. While having plans and dedicating time and effort to make them happen is needed, don’t lose yourself panicking because ‘everyone’ is doing something you’re not.

Be patient with the time of your life. Time is not the same for everyone.

“[Graduating students] have a sense that everyone has it together but them, which causes them to further isolate themselves.” Sheryl Ziegler, a Colorado psychologist and licensed professional counselor, told The Washington Post.

While it might sound cliche if you’re doing your job of planning, dreaming and working, you are on the step you are meant to be — just wait.

Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez shared her postgraduation experience with The Washington Post. For her, it was the period she learned about “post-graduation depression” and how life needs new passions.

“Although it’s not an official diagnosis, ‘postgraduation depression’ is commonly used to describe the extreme sadness and impaired functioning that recent grads report after they leave behind the world they created in college,” Meadows-Fernandez said.

This takes us to my second observation: Be patient with your emotions.

“While most people think of graduation as an exciting and wonderful marking event, many fail to recognize the other emotions evoked by this transition time,” the Montana State University article said. “Graduation not only can bring up feelings of excitement, pride and anticipation, but also those of loss, discouragement and fear.”

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