Graduation: Turbulent Chaos or Exciting Transition? Your Choice!
How I’m applying the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit’s Steps to Resilience to move forward more confidently in my life
Graduating from college feels terrifying — like inevitable, turbulent chaos. It’s one of the most exciting and terrifying times of my life. Armed with a shiny new degree, my work experience, and little else, I’m poised to battle financial insecurity, achieve individual independence, and fight for the chance to retain my passion and continue doing meaningful work. What I mean to say is, even though I’m excited, I feel a little…vulnerable.
As luck would have it, I’m working as a climate resilience writing intern for the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit, a federal interagency website operating under the auspices of the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The site was developed collaboratively and is managed by the Climate Program Office at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NEMAC.
The site’s mission is to help communities build climate resilience, both where they are and as they are currently, while providing access to the tools and information that can help them become prepared — and be resilient to — the impacts of a changing climate.
The goal, then, isn’t to stop making life so damn chaotic. The goal is to prepare for it, so that when the time comes…if the time comes…you’re ready.
While I’ve been learning about the site’s suggested resilience-building framework — the Steps to Resilience — that can help bolster communities and businesses, I thought: “Hey! I bet I could apply those Steps to Resilience to my life, too!”
It goes a little something like this:
Immediate hazards are abundant. Those rising to the top include:
- Being able to find a meaningful job.
- Making sure that I feel financially stable enough to take the kinds of risks that I’d like to take, like moving from Asheville to a big city.
- Knowing that I have emotional resilience — the confidence and trust in myself to take those risks.
As suggested in the Toolkit for Step 1, I start by gathering a team of people who can help me out, people who are routinely kind and compassionate and whose opinions I deeply care about:
- Direct Crisis Aversion: My mom and my roommate.
- Academic Advisers and Consultants: Professors and mentors who have given me honest and genuine feedback on ways to improve.
- Academic Responders: My friends who study economics, who help me study, who clue me in to their future plans, and who instill professional confidence.
- Workplace/ Field Advisers and Consultants: Mentors in the workplace whom I trust and talk to.
- Archival Resource Team: Resources like the career center and writing center on campus, and the specific people that make me feel safe, heard, and whose opinions I trust.
I think my vulnerabilities are fairly common for people my age. They’re things like finding a job and making sure I can do *adult* things like pay my bills on time.
My risk is moderate for most of these. I have a better chance than not of doing all of them. As a newly-minted graduate, however, I have a fairly low chance of doing them well…and almost no chance of doing them well without serious help from my “team.”
Brainstorming here. In no particular order:
Option 1: Teach English in Spain.
Option 2: Find a job in North Carolina in a government position/think tank/private sector/ research firm.
Option 3: Run away to a big city and work at a think tank/research firm.
Option 4: Take classes to prepare for graduate school/work part-time.
Option 5: Go straight to graduate school.
While I don’t know exactly what I want to do, I’m trying to be prepared for whatever comes next.
I’m saving up some money now in case I take an internship.
I’m practicing Spanish on the way to work/school just in case I end up going there.
I’ve been looking for houses in Durham with my friends, and I’ve been practicing making friends in case I go to a big city.
I have a budget I am following so I have emergency savings, and keeping up with my car repairs for the same reason.
I’m taking a GRE class and I’m trying to write to get ready for the working world.
[Pending: May 2019 Graduation Date]
Like many communities throughout America, I’m determined to plan for events that are likely to happen. In order to do it well, resilience matters. The process of creating, establishing, and re-establishing next-best steps is vital in community planning and mobility. They also matter for day-to-day life.
I can’t guarantee that I’ve done everything that I need to. I don’t know that I’ve done enough preparation — but I know that I’m trying and I’m more prepared than I was a day ago, or a week ago, or a year ago.
I haven’t figured it all out, and I can’t plan for things I don’t know about, but I’m excited to take on whatever comes my way.
I feel a little more resilient…which is, after all, the point.
