I am getting really tired of hearing “I don’t know… grad school, I guess” as the reply to the question “So what are your plans after college?”

Once upon a time, graduate school was to me an impressive status symbol. In my mind, only intellectuals and achievers went to grad school. These were the people who found a way to make things happen for them, people who knew what they wanted with their lives and how to get it.

Now, while completing a 4-year degree and getting yourself into and through grad school takes a kind of determination that I can only admire, and I have no doubt most people in grad school really love what they are doing and a good portion are _really_ there as a strategic career move, I am still a lot less impressed whenever I hear of graduate school as part of the “plan” nowadays. To me, I no longer see a determined achiever with a plan in mind. I simply see somebody who is lost and is buying time – with lots and lots of borrowed money.

It just seems like grad school is the default track college graduates these days go on whenever they don’t know what to do with their degree/life. It’s a nice 2 year postponement of having to make any major life decisions while still feeling like you’re really doing something impressive at the same time. And grad school will always be impressive to me – I understand. I love school. I understand the choice of returning to academia, I just know that it’s not for the reasons they should be or are claimed to be for so much of the time. Don’t call it a practical career move when you still don’t really have a career in mind.

I know the job market is getting more and more competitive and grad school does really give you an edge. I know that there are many graduate programs that really prepare you for specific careers, but I also know this much: if you don’t have a clear plan with what you’re going to do with your undergraduate degree and don’t decide beforehand what you’re going to do with your graduate degree, you’re going to be just as lost when you come out.

But what do I know. I am just a preschool teacher and though thoroughly happy with my job now (and in a place where I’m starting to feel pretty good at many aspects of it), if I didn’t have to go through 6 more years of school, I would really consider looking into becoming a relationship counselor.

That’s not really the point of this post that pokes at just about every single person I know.

What I was trying to point out is that I am surrounded by people who are lost and don’t really know what to do with their lives. Grad school is just one of the ways in which we try to find ourselves. Some join the military, some go on missions, others come to China. One way on another, we are all trying to figure out what it is we’re supposed to do as adults in “real life”. We’re all living the “dreadful decision decade” but none of these career-based decisions really give us any lasting satisfaction. How many college graduates quit their first “real job” (sometimes their dream job) within the first year only to be lost again, with travel and grad school next on the list – more postponement of actually having to work at a job? Nobody is really “stuck” at this stage, but the option of making drastic changes only confuses us further. Where is this fulfillment, happiness and contentment we are supposed to have?

And that’s really what this is all about, wandering around, pretending to make “career advancement” decisions to improve our quality of life when really, what we’re looking for isn’t something to complete us, but someone. Someone to commit to, to anchor us, and to give us the kind of resolve, purpose and direction that no class or job could ever replace.

“Real life” doesn’t really begin until you have more than yourself to think about.

It’s not quite as glamorous as we’d like it to be but ultimately, the most satisfaction in life is found in the sacrifices we’ve had to make for our family and those around us. As much as our civilization tries to deny it, inside we all know that family lies at the center.

It’s an interesting place for me to be, just in the gray area between family life and single-hood. There’s still lots of room to develop myself in the world of education and employment, but I can drop all the pretenses of trying to build a life just based on that. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to have found my “someone”. On the other hand, I still need to learn how not to completely lose myself in my relationship with Christopher, to keep up those “me” things that are fulfilling and important in the grand scheme of things.

And I guess that’s why I wrote this blog post.