When I was but a wee high school student, I went with my church’s youth group to a charity event called One Homeless Night. We attempted to sleep on flattened cardboard boxes underneath Interstate 4 to simulate the experience of a homeless person. With the thundering traffic, looming lights, and dirty discomfort, I didn’t get a single minute of sleep.
So, naturally, that’s what comes to mind when I consider life after college.
Maybe it’s just me, but failure is easy to imagine. With the job market so bad, prospects for after school can appear grim. I know friends who, despite their academic excellence and overall capability, worry that they’ll never realize anything close to the careers they desire. This doubt comes from many sources, including experience with friends and family struggling with layoffs and fruitless job searches. News media bombard us with reports on the struggles of young Americans to shake off their debt and start substantial careers. Nothing like images of disaster and distress to inspire someone to take life by the horns.
It was such reports that inspired a miniature emotional breakdown in me not too long ago. I’ve heard all the English major jokes (yes, I would like fries with that), but they stop being so funny when I think about the very real, very close future. I’ve joked since high school that I aspire to live in a box outside a Taco Bell, but maybe that isn’t such a bad contingency plan.
That’s why I think of that One Homeless Night. It gives me an example of the worst case scenario. No job, no home, no life, no hope. It’s not very likely to happen, I tell myself, but what if it does? It happened to those people we were helping. All of those “what ifs” begin to stack up, and I want to give up, a feeling I assume others experience as well.
Then I remember the flip-side to that scenario. There we were, hundreds of church kids, giving money to the Orlando Union Rescue Mission to help people turn their lives around. There were those formerly destitute families, testifying to their changed fortunes. There was that hope, that understanding that it’s almost never impossible to find help and work toward improving even the bleakest circumstances.
This should give all of us angst-ridden seniors some perspective. We worry so much about all this work paying off, about getting the lucrative or meaningful career we aim at. We forget that, if that doesn’t happen right away, it’s not the end of the world. Yes, the world is a scary, unknown place, but we should not shrink from it. We must boldly go forth and try to conquer the world, even if it fights back. After all, what’s the worst that could happen? If One Homeless Night was any indication, it involves hardship, but hardship cushioned with other people’s love, even people that don’t know you.
With the hard work we’ve done and the character we’ve built, we should be assured that there’s a place in the world for us. It might not be what we initially imagined, but it will be there. At the same time, we should be humble and realize our stressors could be much worse. We’ve been granted an extremely enviable opportunity to be outstanding men and women in the world, and that alone should dampen our pride and inflate our gratitude.
As Hillsdale’s true mascot, Aristotle, said, “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” And as another great philosopher said, “You can’t always get what you want.”
Here’s to the impending doom of graduation, whatever it may bring.
