5 Things You Can Do to Prepare for Life After College

With graduation looming ever closer, the pressure to figure out your next steps for life after college is growing. As someone who has been in your shoes, I know how you feel. Graduating from college was wonderful. Being able to finally say I graduated gave me a feeling of pride that has yet to diminish. Even though it gave me a feeling of pride, worry started creeping in soon after. I worried about a lot of things such as not having a job, loans, and a host of other things at the beginning of graduating from college.  I remember how stress I was then, so I came up with 5 things you can do to prepare for life after college while you are still in college. Hopefully, this list makes you feel more prepared about life after college.

Head to the Career Center at Your School

Before you leave college, you should head over to your school’s career center. The career center is a great resource for helping you tackle the job side of things after college. Some of the resources to take advantage of at the career center are resume review, mock interviews, career fairs, and networking events with professionals in your field.

Apply to Jobs

You should be applying to jobs before you even pay for your cap and gown. I think one of the reasons I got a job so fast after graduating from college was because I started passively applying to jobs mid-semester of my spring semester of senior year. The job application process can be a long one. It’s better to start early and get into the habit of applying to a few jobs a day than to wait until after graduation day and be overwhelmed by the sudden reality that you need to get a job.

One way to get started with applying for jobs is to see if your school is partnered with a company called Handshake. Handshake is a way for college students and alumni to search for jobs and internships all while connecting with employers.

Save Some Money

The days of getting free food and stuff are very far in between after graduating from college. Because of that, you want to have some money saved up for after you graduate even if it’s just to buy yourself something good to eat. If you don’t know where to start with a saving fund, also called an emergency fund, check out my article on emergency funds.

Review Your Student Loan Information

This is super important to do. I can’t stress how important this is. Reviewing your student loan information keeps the surprise of how much you owe and when you owe at a minimum. In addition, reviewing your information will tell you how much your interest rate is and when your monthly payments are due. Knowing this will help you get a plan in place of how you will be tackling your student loans. 

Plan Something Fun to Do to Celebrate Graduating College

You just spent several years of your life struggling through all-nighters, decent to bad food and long class hours of trying to stay awake and learn a subject from someone standing on a stage. You deserve to celebrate the amazing hard work you did to gain your degree.

Those are the five things I think you should do to prepare for life after college. I hope that these tips have provided some relief during this stressful and wonderful time. Did you enjoy this article or feel like you have anything else to add? I’d love to discuss it with you in the comment section below this article! Thank you for reading.