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The Painstaking Task of Deciding on a Post-Graduation Plan

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Sooner or later, everyone comes across the decision of choosing what to do after graduation. More often than not, this decision is heavily exhausting and lengthy. Despite all it’s vices, it’s a crucial decision for every college-goer. We underline a list of steps every college student inadvertently ends up doing in the process.

Being a graduate is considered far from enough to be deemed as “well-qualified” in today’s time, as a master’s degree has become imperative. And one would agree that making the decision regarding the Master’s degree is a struggle. A very painful one indeed.
There are some things that seem destined to happen during the planning process. It all starts with the realization of – “what after college?” Our smooth-sailing lives are struck with a dead-end with the end of college. It seems as if a time bomb that is ticking slowly with every passing day is all ready to go off, if we don’t come up with a way to diffuse it i.e. decide upon our post-graduation plan. The mental chaos thus created leads to a series of similar reactions.

We start off with “The Explorer” phase. This phase is marked by endless searching of courses over the internet. All the colleges and scholarships available are looked upon and shortlisted for further processing. Not only this, there is a simultaneous intake of inputs from the seniors and family members who tend to give their expertise on the subject. A pool of information is collected from various “sources” to ensure that we don’t miss out on anything. Here is where things get worse.

The bulk of information collected starts confusing us. Firmly deciding upon one plan is has the probability of 0 i.e a non-happening event. All the options appear both- tantalizing and risk-taking to us. Adding to the misery are the conflicting pieces of advice we are bombarded by all the people around us. This is the moment when doubt starts seeping into our brains. All the efforts to collect the information? seems to have gone in vain due to our inability to yield conclusions out of it. The entire agenda seems to diminish by now. This is “The Retarding” phase.

After all the havoc we go through, there comes a time when we give up on everything we have done till now. Everything that we had done with regard to the concocting the perfect plan for future becomes meaningless. We contemplate; where did we go wrong? Or, what loopholes are left to be covered? But we fail to come up with an answer. The problem is that even when we have everything, we seem to have nothing. Colleges, courses, scholarships, and all the other necessary things to look upon have all been thoroughly checked. How we wish all that data could help us to fulfill our purpose. Hence, we officially reach the “I Give Up” phase.

Only if life were so easy. After we recover from this setback, we understand the fact that doing post-graduation is important, nevertheless. The painful part is we find ourselves at the same point where we began. Confused, nervous, and unsure. What’s devastatingly true at the same time is that we lack the intial enthusiasm we displayed. We go forth with all this doubt and frustration, hoping to find the answer before that time bomb explodes. Some dare to repeat the cycle. Some leave it out of eventual frustration. Whether one can agree upon their master’s degree or not, everyone can certainly agree that planning for post-graduation is a painstaking task.

 

Feature Image Credits: Connect Nigeria

Karan Singhania
[email protected]

 

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