Transitioning from college to the real world can be harder than you think and soon you realize that you basically suck at life. After graduating, there are a lot of ups and downs. And, believe me, there are plenty of downs — especially in the beginning. Everyone is excited to get started with life. But, as soon as you start, the logistics of the real world hit you you like a ton of bricks — like no more free Wi-Fi and pretty much everything else you take for granted.

So here’s what nobody tells you about life after college. #RealWorldProblems

You will have all of these problems, but nobody to share them with.

The real world is no longer like college, where you are surrounded by 1,600 fellow students and hundreds of your closest friends. That’s no longer a reality anymore. Just know that if you want actual social connections, you need to work for them after school ends.

You might never know exactly what it is that you want to do. Sometimes you just need to choose something and stick with it. There are pros and cons with every decision. As long as the pros are just good enough then you have to be like: “this is what I’m choosing and this is what I’m going to get good at because I appreciate these aspects of it.” Often, we just want to know that there’s a profession that is going to match us so perfectly, and if it doesn’t, we think it’s not for us. But, that’s just not the way it works.

Many students go into investment banking or consulting, and they say that they are only going to do it for a couple years until they figure out what they really want to do. But, the crazy thing about what you picked after college is that you keep continuing down a rabbit hole of things that are similar to it. For example, if you choose to live in LA, then you might end up in SF. Whereas, if you decide to move to Europe, you might end up in Germany afterwards. The choices you make immediately after leaving college end up rolling into other choices and becoming a much bigger narrative. Most people underestimate how hard it is to jump ship or reinvent yourself, mainly because you start building things into your life that you don’t want to leave behind.

Lastly, what nobody tells you about life after college is that you can actually shape it however the heck you want to shape it. There’s no reason you need to go into a job immediately after graduation (unless of course you need the money). And there’s no reason that you need to go into a specific type of job or move to a specific location. Everyone knows this, but in the day to day shuffle, it’s so easy to forget: and sometimes, you just need another perspective. It’s really important for you to realize that you can follow your own path and make your own way.

— Zoe