As college wound up, I was so stressed out about finding the right job. There was so much pressure. Companies were interviewing on campus 24/7. It was a total competition: Who’s got a job? At what salary? What a headache. If you didn’t get one right away then you were a loser. My advice is to try not to feel pressure to get the perfect job after college. Do’t go to work right away. That time period is a good time to stop, go travel the world, do something, find yourself and then jump into the real world.
Go travel the world. That’s what I wish I had done. At the time I thought, I’m done. I can’t ask parents to fund travel or get a “travel loan”. I had to go to work. But if you are resourceful, there are ways to do it without money. You don’t need much at that age. Just get out a backpack and take your $100 bucks and work along your way.
I did it at 30. My husband and I were married a few years and we decided we wanted to travel. We had an honest discussion and both felt we missed an opportunity after college. We wanted to travel before we had kids. We made a conscious decision to stop our lives and do what we didn’t do when we were in our twenties. At first we thought we’d quit our jobs and live in Telluride for a couple years and just stop the churn. Then I thought, “This is silly…if we are going to go do this we should really go do something.” I started researching and we chose to to to Asia.
We both went to our work and said we want to do this travel thing and we understand that you can’t hold a job for us. We told the we’d love to have employment when get back but are willing to take the change. They said go. We traveled for 6 weeks. Then did it again for a month.
I realized there is a world outside the bubble I live in. I can see the world and I’m going to go get it. I’m going to learn. What happens is you go to college, you get out of college, you get a job and work here and get paid this much and then… it’s just all you know. It’s scheduled.
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