What’s Next?
I am now a college graduate, but that is purely technical. Mentally, I’m cursing my crammed class schedule and waiting for a tall, tattooed guy to ask me out in the campus courtyard (This happened once six months ago and went nowhere but is a nice mood booster on days when my mirror betrays me.)
Physically, I’m lying in my childhood bed with headphones in because my parents’ neighbors are loyal members of the Cult of Suburbia, where quiet mornings without lawn mowers and pool contractors cannot and will not be tolerated.
Emotionally, I’m spending approximately four dollars a day on coffee-induced dopamine and reading books that I hope will make me cry but never do. I am a rock, but not in the cool, unaffected way; purely in the “I need to go numb before I spend hours doom scrolling on Instagram” way.
There are so many wonderful outlets these days for us self-inflicted self-comparers, but for me, Instagram will always take the cake. Facebook is too limited, as any attempts at comparison to peers must be drawn from the sappy paragraphs and blurry photos posted by their parents. Twitter is too ironic: a post-achievement microverse where Gen Zers can discuss more important things, like sex scenes on Euphoria. LinkedIn is fairly ripe but has that phony corporate malaise. TikTok is, simply, an insane asylum.
So, Instagram it is: my number one news source for all things terrifyingly postgraduate. Cap and gown photos, career announcements, bio changes, and travel photos. I’ve prowled the ‘gram for these life updates with borderline-obsessive thoroughness, putting the research skills from my journalism degree to good use.
“What’s next?” is a question I have trouble answering but no problem posing to others, whose answers I cling to from either a fleeting throne of self confidence or a sinkhole of insecurity. Mostly the latter. When you’re 22 and freshly diploma-ed, this simple question loses all its pleasant curiosity and instead becomes a merciless interrogation of your entire sense of self.
Every time a well-intentioned neighbor or relative asks me “What’s next?” I roll my eyes at the undergrad who spent all her time penning plays and essays and now wants to be a “real” “writer.” She’s no Joan Didion, but she’ll wear her hair in sloppy top knots and read big books to pretend otherwise. She’ll start her English master’s degree in the fall, but everyone — because everyone is clinging to her life’s twists and turns like a pulp fiction thriller — will know it’s all a ruse. They’ll smile and nod and raise a glass to her “next step,” doubting it’s anything more than smoke and mirrors.
On the other hand, when my friends answer “What’s next?” the sun peeks out from behind the clouds, candy bars are now a nickel, and there’s probably a flash mob on the horizon. American meritocracy has functioned to a T, launching smart and capable young adults on paths to happiness and prosperity (never mind the rapid inflation, lingering effects of a global pandemic, and potential war with Russia).
Their next steps unfold with Sherlock Holmes-ian logic and inevitability, bridging longtime passions with career stability. Forget the predictions you laid out at the high school lunch table, where Tara was destined to be a dancer and Tammy an attorney. False. Wrong. Incorrect. Obviously, Tara has wound up in nursing school, and Tammy? Well, Tammy’s a Bushwick artist whose trust fund makes penny pinching a fad…just as the gospel foretold.
The people with plans are the absolute worst. Oh god, they’re the worst. With full-time jobs secured months before graduation, liveable entry-level incomes, and long-term romantic partners, they radiate an easy stability I can’t fully articulate but will briefly compare to tech investors who ride Bird scooters or anyone who’s ever started a food blog. They are right on track, and from this conjecture I draw a host of other conclusions, i.e., the term “in-network psychiatrist” is completely foreign to them, and they’d probably beat me on Jeopardy. Naturally, they’d use their winnings to fund weddings, baby showers, and townhouse down payments.
They are as personally fulfilled as they are professionally stacked; meanwhile, seeing friends’ engagement photos on social media sends me straight into a custom-made Twilight Zone. “What is this?” I think, “The 1950s? The good ol’ days of Mary and Jim pushing lil’ Anne in her stroller to the corner store?” If you’re fresh out of school and down to devote your entire life to someone, the biggest compliment I can give you is that you terrify me. I and every other 20-something commitment-phobe look at you from our messy, season-10-sitcom-plot lives like ultra-marathoners crossing the finish line. How did you pull it off? And when will you collapse from the exhaustion?
I acknowledge that, as a token naive youth, my logic is flawed and my gripes narrow-minded. The friends I trust enough to confide in about these anxieties assure me that I’ve got it all wrong. They are the ones whose lives resemble a Jackson Pollack painting; they are the ones whose fates cruelly evade linearity.
Because, as it turns out, I’m not the only person plagued by Instagram updates, and self doubt really doesn’t discriminate (possible exceptions being sociopaths and Tom Cruise). There’s a whole generation of naive youth whose personal and professional trajectories are zig zagging between parental advice, aspirational TikToks, and stone cold realities. This is exhausting — not only for us naive youth but, I’m sure, for everyone who must listen to our rants about feeling lost, finding purpose, and fleeing America to open a creperie in the south of France. *Note, for the bro types, this latter topic becomes “starting a prank channel on YouTube.”
When even my engineer friend revealed that he, too, is haunted by “What’s next?”, I knew I needed to reevaluate. This guy builds robots and thinks his job prospects are skimpy, so I guess there truly is no hope for any of us. I mean that in a good way. Some of the most remarkable people I know think they’re one wrong move from becoming the boozer in mom and dad’s basement when in reality they’re destined to at least be penthouse winos. They feel predestined to ramen noodles when all the rest of us know they’ll be eating, like, really, really good spaghetti…with meatballs.
It’s so much easier to put hope in others than in ourselves. When I look at my friends, I’m like a kids’ soccer coach, gifting everyone cute little plastic trophies with inscriptions like “Most Determined” and “Most Likely To Join an Anarchist Commune in Bend, Oregon.” (They know who they are.) I stand up in front of the whole team with a grand speech about passion and potential that is long and rambly but still well-intentioned enough to inspire.
In no world do I see myself as optimistically, but in no world does anyone else. Graduating has been the greatest test yet of my ability to step outside myself, look in the mirror, and confidently say, “Hey, you’re not special. I know you’re an Enneagram Type 4 and thus want to imagine that your turmoil is profound, but it’s shared by 99% of these other kids in caps and gowns, so shut up.” Self love, I’m learning, means celebrating and reality-checking in equal measure. Somewhere at that crossroads, you’ll see that we’re all in this together and that being young sucks but is exciting because it sucks.
