What's Next For The New Graduate?

Within this week or the next, graduating students will take their final exams. This is perhaps the most crucial test they’ll face in their academic lives. But the biggest measure of what they’ve so far learned is yet to come...  after graduation.

The mere possession of a college diploma is by no means a guarantee of how a person will actually fare in life. A college diploma is simply a document attesting that its holder has had completed years of academic training and is now deemed officially qualified to make a significant contribution to the affairs of society. Whether what has been learned in school will effectively match up with the challenges the graduate will face in the real world is a completely different matter.

After a few weeks of rest the new graduate would be out looking for a job. He has to. Even in the most nurturing homes there seems to be an unspoken rule: A family member who has earned a college degree is supposed to be ready enough to start providing for him- or herself. And, he or she is expected to start chipping in for the family expenses.

The matter can be quite overwhelming for one who has all his or her life been looked after and shielded. But no one can forever take shelter under Mama and Papa’s protective wings. Those wings will one day wear out and become too weak to sustain the whole family’s flight of life.

At some point, the young will have to start fending for himself. The school system is supposed to help prepare him for this. Ten years of general schooling and another four or five years of specialized studies is all it entails. Then the young person crosses the threshold towards his own independence.

Through a few years in college, one is thought to have acquired quite a substantial knowledge not only of a particular trade or vocation but also of himself. He now, at least, has an idea of whatever he will become in life. And as he proceeds to establish himself in his chosen line of profession and adapt to new environments, such previously set self-concept tends to prevail and predetermine the outcome of his day-to-day efforts.

Majority of a person’s failures and successes in life are nothing more or less than products of his operating mental attitudes. It is almost impossible for a person to achieve something that he doesn’t believe he can achieve. The way always seems to open up for the person of determination, the person of faith and courage.

College graduates are presumed to have a victorious mental attitude, or at least a bit of it. It is an attitude of inner confidence and a sense of mastery to face up to the world. Yet it is not only the educational system that should place the winner’s traits in students; the students themselves have so much to do with how much value they get from their schooling.

The school system is devised with more emphasis on the accumulation of information and acquisition of technical skills. It is rather lacking in the cultivation of the right attitudes in students. There is hardly a course in school devoted to positive yet objective mental attitude.

The outside community cannot be expected to take up the function, either. One who openly talks brightly about his plans and dreams may only mete out with ridicule from friends and neighbours. All too often society associates bubbly enthusiasm and positivism with naiveté.

There is, also, quite a gap between academic knowledge and practical wisdom. The most brilliant intellectuals of the world are concentrated in schools and universities, earning meager incomes as compared to what their average former students are getting in real-world jobs outside.

This is not to look down on the nobility of the teaching or the academic profession. In fact, many college professors refuse better paying jobs in the corporate world out of their commitment to moulding the future generations. But it’s unfortunate that the learning taught in college seldom leave the campus after graduation. It remains in the classrooms for yet another year of discussion — purely intellectual talk that hardly gets translated into practical application.

In our constantly changing world, with its complex forces all about us, we sometimes tend to believe that we’re being driven by the force of circumstance. And yet the truth is that we only do those things that we choose to do. Even though we may not want to go a certain way, we allow ourselves to go that way because it seems to be the easier way or offers either the least resistance or the most immediate rewards.

At times we tend to follow that path that is easier to go, even though we know it will probably bring stagnation and eventual failure. There are really no victims of circumstance. Those so-called victims create the very circumstances that victimize them.

We’re always at the crossroads of decision, in our family relationships, in our business dealings, in our life, our world and our affairs. There’s always a need for us to decide, to choose, and it is so important that we make the right judgments. A college diploma is of little help, if at all, in this area.

The new graduate will now have to start putting his academic learning into action. He has to learn to stop looking to other people or to outside circumstances to blame for his own misfortunes. He will gain more by owning up his mistakes, by learning the lesson and doing better next time.

There may not always be right answers to all questions. The new professional will make mistakes, big and small, in one area of life or the other. But, for sure, he will make far fewer errors is he allows himself to be consistently taught by actual real-life experience.

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