3 Things Graduating College Will Make You Realize

1. You’ll miss the times that you hated the most.

Papers. Classrooms. Professors. More paper. Examinations.

It is a never-ending tale of brain-work, higher than normal caffeine dosages, and sleepless nights. Times like these make you want to search for the far end of the tunnel and scream “Make it stop. Please!!!”

Yes, it could get that bad. The intellectual vibe of the university somehow clings to your system and makes you want to know more or at least something. This is probably one of the reasons why a lot of students haven’t dropped out yet despite this mind-wrecking phase of their lives.

But as what they say, there’s always a brighter side. One day, you’ll miss the comforts that only your university could give you. You’ll miss sitting in your classes, staring at your professor or at the window, wondering about your life, doodling to pretend that you’re taking down notes. Sometimes we fail to appreciate the present and we want to simply escape it because we’re fed up, we find it too slow, boring, uninteresting, exhausting and unproductive. Was it because we grew up in a world that is more concerned with the end results than our personal growth as we go through the process?

You might hate it now, but soon you’ll miss everything. EVERYTHING.

2. You need to dip your feet in the waters to feel it.

Age-wise, college is like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode and snatch your youth. It’s here where you lose the suffix –teen in your age. In response to this, some students master the art of YOLO-ing, trying as many crazy things as they can to add to their roster of experiences before they turn 20. Some improve themselves to achieve certain goals before they reach that age. The best word to describe these people? DAREDEVILS.

Taking risks is something people typically lose along with college graduation. Most of us want to play it safe, especially when it comes to finding a job. However sometimes playing it safe isn’t the safest thing to do for ourselves. The security it gives us transforms us into nothing but dampened spirits and complacent individuals.

Remember the time in college when you wanted to pass an exam so badly you worked your ass off and studied like there was no tomorrow? That was the driven version of you. Some of us work for the money, let’s admit it. But without the drive to be better — and without a goal to achieve — we will eventually lose our interests. We have dreams of our own, dreams that other people will not dream to the same degree as we do. It might take long — long enough for us to take several jobs that will satisfy urgent needs outside ourselves. But when the time comes to take the risk and to fulfill it, be ready to unleash the Daredevil in you.

3. There’s a higher degree of education called life.

In college, we have books that we take home to study. Professors to broaden our knowledge. Examinations to apply everything that we’ve learned. But all of these elements are just as present in our daily lives, albeit in different forms.

As the saying goes, learning is vital in life and our education doesn’t stop when we finish college. Life lessons could be less technical but they are certainly essential. I don’t know how your mind works but mine works better with experiential learning. Which is why most of the things that I retain in my brain are the things that I was actually able to experience firsthand (my degree back in college was Chemistry). We really tend to forget a significant portion of what we learned inside the classroom and pick whatever we find useful for our daily lives. But once we’re out in the real world, we harness every experience — good or bad — to contribute to our learning.