Tag: graduation

“Sometimes the wrong choices bring us to the right places.” ~Unknown

Like so many others, I am a recent college graduate who is still living at my parents’ house and working my minimum wage high school job as I scour the web for opportunities and get one rejection email after another.

However, I don’t know how many others I can speak for when I say that I didn’t see this coming.

I graduated with a nursing degree and heard from more than a few people in the field that there was a shortage and jobs were plentiful. I had no back-up plan because I was so sure my Plan A would work out.

I was essentially blind-sided each and every time I got a rejection email because it meant I still had no direction.

The most terrifying part of all of this, though, isn’t the uncertainty about the future and complete lack of any idea where I’ll be six months or a year from now. Although it is pretty scary at times, there’s also an excitement to not having committed to a career yet and being able to have these kinds of options.

But of course I haven’t acted on them because the primary, overwhelming fear du jour is that of making the “wrong” choice.

One of the most freeing moments of my post-grad life was when I realized that no one can say what is the “right” or “wrong” decision for me.

What’s right for so many people (getting a job, getting engaged, putting down roots in one place) is certainly not right for me, at least not right now. So what’s to say what I want to do is any crazier?

Just because it’s not what someone else would do, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

And even if it doesn’t necessarily create a linear path from where I am now to where I think I want to be ten years from now (flight nursing in Seattle, in case you were wondering), who’s to say that where I think I want to be in the future is best or where I should be anyway? (more…)