The New Wave of the Post-Grad Wanderer

The past few weeks I have been mostly in transit, packing and re-packing; a state that I am honestly  more comfortable in than staying put. It is a nice transition into the next chapter of my life which I am currently calling "Teaching English in France," because clearly I am in a creative drought.

Anyways, all of this moving and packing and re-packing has me evaluating the past year (yikes) that I have been a college graduate. It's weird-- I always had certain expectations of how I would feel, what I would be doing, and needless to say this year has thrown me a curve ball. I've made some leaps- took the GRE (did alright), was accepted to teach English at a French high school for a year, met a wonderful man, opened a savings account, and finally grew my hair back out.

What has been the most difficult about this past year were the perpetual comments and questions about my degree, what my plans are, blah blah blah. I realize that these are just polite conversation starters, but they always sound judgemental to me.

You majored in what? French? What are you going to do with that?

Where do you work now? Oh, a pizza restaurant..that's nice.

And the inevitable...Well, when are you going to get married?

I smiled, laughed, gave the right answers, but inside I was cringing. Clearly these people have no respect for the Post-Grad Wanderer, a term I coined to describe my phase of life at the moment. The truth is, college is not what it used to be. It is less practical and more about development; students leave broadened, knowledgeable but not necessarily hire-able.

After a year of working the dynamic duo of nannying by day, serving pizza by night, I amassed (what feels like) a small fortune and I am moving to France to teach English at a high school for a minimal monthly stipend of about 1000 euros a month. I am going against the grain and I know it, but I am not the only one. Nearly every one of my friends from college are doing something of the sort--Peace Corps, Americorps, Teach for America, traveling, and many others are working hard at dead-end jobs because they are honestly more content waiting tables than succombing to "the man."

This result of the economic downturn has (gasp) given college grads the opportunity to think, and the options are making us crazy.

People don't just want a job anymore. They want to be the expert. They want to change people, change the world. To be thrilled to go to work each day. Of course these are all good things, but what happened to the simple days when we shot from one predetermined chapter to the next: college, career, marriage, kids, Disney vacations, retirement, and then more Disney vacations?

And for a lot of people this works just fine. Believe me, many nights I have laid awake wishing I viewed life in this way. In those moments of life planning/ career related anxiety I sometimes envision myself in the 1950's where I (maybe) went to college, took up a 9-5 secretary position to kill time until my certain someone popped the question. I am often jealous of people who are less complicated and analytical than myself. Hopefully one day I can tame and channel my craziness into something productive. Then I can prove my theory that the Post-Grad Wanderer does come out on top.