Post-college life is so much better. The freedom from all kinds of restrictions is what I enjoy most. I can live where I want, I can have my own place, sleep and wake on my own schedule, watch what I want on TV, cook what I want, buy my own furniture, have my own pets, and engage in the hobbies of my choice. I remember the intense satisfaction I got when arriving home at night to my first apartment after college. This is MY place, I rent it with MY money. It may just be the kind of person I am, but I cherish my independence more than anything.
Ummmm…little of both. The problem is, what you gain in economic and financial freedom by being employed, you lose in leisure time. You finally have your own money and can do with it what you choose. Unfortunately, 10AM-2PM Monday-Thursday isn’t considered “Full Time” anymore. 
So it’s a mixed bag. The transition is a bit weird. The idea that there’s no real “next week” or “finals coming up” or “next semester.” No. Now it’s just, “go to work to do your job.” Over and over, week after week.
The world was not what I thought it would be. I thought “I have a college degree now. I’ll grab some job postings and choose my future career.” Well…6 months later I started a course to deal cards in a casino because I finally just needed cash. 5 YEARS later, that’s still my job. Took quite a while to adjust, partially because I led a pretty sheltered childhood.
I actually really agree with this. I lived a very sheltered childhood and had JUST started coming around when I graduated from college. I felt like I had just completely missed every opportunity I was ever going to have to have fun. That it was all downhill from there on out. Not only is that not the case, but the independence makes it even better.
There’ll be good and bad, but overall I think you’ll like it. I’m a couple years out of uni now and things are good.
With a job you should have at least a little money you can actually use for enjoyable stuff rather than…say…just having enough to eat like a human. It’s great now that I can see a show or concert is coming up, and know that I can most likely afford to go without too much worry.
And without assignments and essays etc, it’s fantastic to have weekends and evenings where your time is actually your own - no worrying about the exam you should probably be studying for and whatnot.
Also, if you find a job opportunity you’re interested in somewhere else (or just want to go live somewhere else) - you’re free to pack your things and go give it a shot.
I worked a part time job along with my college courses so I was constantly busy and constantly broke. My car was a piece of crap. Having no A/C and windows that won’t roll down SUCKS in August in Alabama! In the rare moments of free time, it could be hard to enjoy myself because it always felt like there was an assignment I could be working on or something I should be studying.
Since college, I’ve been much happier. There are more responsibilities sure but the advantages they come with far outweigh the negatives.
I loved college. Books, learning, sharing my writing, getting feedback on all that I did, having gobs of spare time…it was all lovely. However, it was a lot of work, and I usually had a part time job to go along with it as well, and usually a long distance relationship on top of that I had to maintain.
Now my relationship lives with me, I have only one job that actually pays me, and all of that free time I can do whatever I want. I don’t have to study or feel guilty about not studying. As someone said above, I also get to choose everything. I live where I want, eat what I want, have pets if I want, and socialise whenever I want. The deliniation between work and free time is very sharp, not like it is in college.
Of course right now I am studying for something and I can’t find a steady job (I’m temping, working about 20 hours a week average). Once I’ve taken my exams, however, and get a full time real job again, life will once again be golden.
Mathilda: Is life always this hard, or is it just when you’re a kid?
Leon: Always like this.
College was fun - but I enjoy my job and being a mom and wife more…
My last year of college I worked part time as a bagger/cashier. After graduation, I just glided on in this job because it was so nice not having an responsibilities beyond putting in eight hours a day at work. It was rather pleasant.
This was detrimental in the long run. I consider those few post-college years to have been wasted.
Pretty much this (tho I have succeeded in structuring my work to have as little responsibility, authority, and stress as possible.) The big difference between college and real life is that the latter is REAL. Things really matter - and pay significant dividends over a vastly longer scale than the brief span of a 4-year (or so!) college career. Of course, if you are a fuck up, you might not enjoy the repercussions.
But all of the good times I had in college don’t hold a candle to the satisfaction and enjoyment I’ve derived from having worked with my wife to raise 3 pretty neat young adults. Yeah, there is a lot of work and sacrifice involved in beginning a career, a serious relationship, starting a family, living within a budget … But the payoffs are so much huger than anything you would get at college. And you realize how much you grow in so many ways after actually having lived a life, rather than just studying about one.
I would never have dreamt how great it would be now in my late-40s, with the kids all off to college, and my wife and I are getting to plan how we wish to style the next few decades of our lives. (Of course, I wouldn’t mind having back that bullet-proof body I enjoyed as recently as 10-years ago!) 
My college experience was pretty much a Hollywood depiction of a booze-soaked orgy of fun. The chicks weren’t as hot though.
Whether life after college “sucks” really depends on you. If college sucks for you, you should probably try to figure out what sucks about it. Chances are those things will still suck once you get out of college and might even be exacerbated by the fact that you are no longer in a rigidly structured college environment. Things that were awesome in college like having friends or a girlfriend or hobbies or whatever can actually be better once you have some money coming in and are supporting yourself.
Personally I have found that my life has continued to improve since college.
In many ways, life after college does suck. You have to work on somebody else’s schedule, getting up early and getting home late 240 days out of the year, rather than going to class for 15 hours and designing your own work schedule for the rest of the time. You start and end the day with a bitch of a commute instead of a 10-minute walk to class. Christmas vacation starts at noon on the 24th and ends at 8:00 a.m. on the 26th.
At work, unless you’re very lucky or very senior, you have to work all day on what someone else thinks is important. There are no more electives.
Most of your co-workers will be much older, with families, and no interest in meeting people or making friends. You have to work a lot harder to find social activities with people you like, and a lot of the time you’ll be too tired to do it.
But, you get paid. That makes all the difference.
As I said, a lot of that depends on you. Did you just take any job or did you spend time trying to figure out a career you would enjoy? Do you live in the middle of nowhere or do you work in or near a major city with lots to do? Are you coworkers a bunch of bitter old losers or are they young, hip and ambitious?
My experience for several years after college was not materially different from college in may ways. Except my friends and I all had jobs and some money now. We all lived around the NYC area. During the summers we rented beach houses on the Jersey Shore (and no, we were not all a bunch of guidos like on the MTV show) and ski houses in the winter. Many of us worked in companies that hired a lot of new college grads.
As for work, I had to do a shitload of work in college. We constantly had to pull all nighters and do hours worth of homework and studying. At least now I get paid for it.
Also, I’ve worked at places like you describe as recently as last year and they suck (I’m 37 fwiw). It has nothing to do with people having familes or lives or whatever. It has to do with working with people who suck. I bet if I met those same people when they were 25 or 18 they would still suck.
It can also depend on where you are at both times.
If your college is funded by scholarships, or Mom and Dad, or even loans with a distant due date you have the temperament to ignore and your coursework is interesting and fairly easy - and then you leave school to find out that your meal plan is no longer included in life, you graduate to a dried up job market, your loans come due, your apartment is crappy, you are overspending on your credit cards to be able to afford good shoes to interview in - life right after college SUCKS.
If you don’t enjoy college life, have a lot of stress of working while trying to go to school, struggle with your coursework - then manage to transition into a fulfilling job you enjoy that provides adequately for your needs, post college life rocks.
The truth for most people is somewhere in the middle. College is not all joy - whether that joy is intellectual or booze soaked orgies. Parts of it are a drudge. Most of us go through college with some level of resource constraints limiting the amount of “fun” we can have. And post college is similar. Few of us get out to a job we LOVE where we can do anything we want, that pays us in such a way we can afford to do anything we want. Most of us get out and struggle with bills and relationships and jobs.
OK, IMO there is an ebb and flow to life. Some good times and some bad times. You’ll see more good times if you actively pursue them. This takes an effort though.
This was the probably the hardest thing for me to deal with after college. It’s easy to make friends when you’re living in a dorm with a bunch of unmarried guys who are pretty much all the same age as you, have a lot of energy and who leave their doors open all the time.
It’s much harder in a work environment where a lot of people have families as well as their own established social circles and aren’t really looking for new people to hang out with.
I didn’t spend enough time in college to know how much it sucks. But life after, or at least beyond, college is certainly not total suck.
Really though, it’s life. I’ve had days where everything has fallen into place and the simple of joy of being alive has been enough to take my breath away, and days where every thing flies apart and nothing I can do will lessen the horror or fill in the gaping loss; and I’ve even had them back to back. Usually though, life is what you make it, in college and out of it, the paths before you are always infinite, and choices you make are what matters, especially the choices you make about what matters to you.
Remember the words on the king’s ring: “This too shall pass”
Teaira, are you sure that money is really the cause of your troubles? I know that sounds like a foolish thing to say, but the truth is that handling money never becomes fun or easy, even for the wealthy. Even after you pay off your student loans and any other debts, you’re still going to have to play a delicate balancing game in order to keep your finances in control and save up for retirement. So, if money is really the only thing bothering you, then no, it will not get any better after college.
I was miserable in college. I was studying to be a teacher. I didn’t really like most of my classmates and my best friends were all off campus. Everything about studying just plain depressed me and I never looked forward to the next day. I spent all of my time thinking that what I was doing was basically pointless and having a lot of existentialist angst.
Then, a couple years after I had graduated, I said to myself, “Teaching kinda sucks.” So I quit and found a new job. I now have better friends and more time for my hobbies. Life is amazing and I wouldn’t want to go back to my college years under any circumstances.
Maybe the problem is that you haven’t set a proper goal yet that really matches what you want. As others have advised, I suggest going to the Career Services office and seeing if they have any suggestions.
This is the best way to sum it up.
I mean, people ask if there is life after highschool!
Now college. I loved college-it was a great time, for learning and having fun.
But after 4 years, i was ready for something different.
Is there anything more pathetic that a 6-year “super senior”?:rolleyes:
I found the biggest challenge was finding friends outside of work. I worked with alot of young people right out of school and we tended to work long hours. It’s fine at first when you don’t know anyone, but eventually you really do want to create a life that is somewhat separate from your job.
But these things don’t necessarily make life “sucky” after college. They are simply normal changes and challenges that must be dealt with.
I find it fun. But then again I work for a big accounting firm.
A 30 year old “alumni advisor” living in your fraternity house Old School style. 
I far, far prefer my life after-college. While I would overall characterize my college experience as positive and life-changing, it also was some of the most difficult times of my life, even though I actually liked all my teachers and classmates. For the most part, my life has been easier and less stressful after college. But, then again, I’m now doing exactly what I want, when I want, and I have some money in my pocket so I could enjoy myself without worrying too much about every last penny. The one thing I do miss about college is some of the raw creative and intellectual energy and enthusiasm, which is why I tend to like to hang around parts of town like Hyde Park (University of Chicago) or Evanston (Northwestern.) But college itself? No thanks. I still have nightmares about not being able to graduate/flunking a test/etc.