another door will open. Today, I found that that is not true. Instead, when the door shut behind me, I faced the world, big and open and scary and cold.

Today, less than 30 minutes ago, my life changed. Up until now I have been steadily employed for 9 full years, starting when I was 14. As of 10:04 EST today, December 14, 2006, my second job is over. It was not unexpected, as I was a student employee, and am graduating Saturday, but somehow I wasn't prepared. I suddenly find myself with an odd thought: my life has irrevocably changed. When that door shut behind me (though it would be poetic to say 'silently', it wasn't. the door in question is quite loud) my entire life up to this point is effectively over.

Not the most important parts, certainly. I still have the best SO in the world, Blyss, and I'm still, you know, alive. I still have my family and my friends, but my specific goals have all been met and I quite literally don't know what to do.

So, for want of a better option, I came here. Tell me your stories of life-changing events, and how you dealt with them. Give me advice on my future (I won't guarantee I'll take it, but there's some smart people here who's opinions I respect). If you're in a similar situation, come here and maybe some of those smart, respected people will help you too.


(For those who want to give specific advice, I'm graduating with a BS in CS and minors in Creative Writing and Mathematics, and live in the Cincinnati area, with no interest in moving for the next 6-18 months, minimum)

My specific advice to you would be, find a job that interests you and pays the bills.

I think it is fairly serious to be graduating and been taken by surprise on the job-changing thing. Do you have a place to live, at least?

I'm assuming your minor in creative writing represents a hobby or career goal...

Why don't you see if you can find a good programming job to start out with, and then write on the side? It's a great one-two combination to give you A) daily stuff and a means to get by and B) a private goal as well as something to do when you're off work.

I'm too young to have gone through a big life-change... Well, at least without knowing exactly what my next step was. (Elementary school to middle school to high school to college...) But I wish you luck with yours.

Never attempt to do anything big and scary alone. Make sure you have a big support group, like family and friends, who are willing to help out and listen if you feel like you're stuck. My big life-changing decision was to move to Hong Kong after graduating from university in the US. I was very lucky to have had an aunt here to take me in for 4 months and support me while I looked for a job. I had to work a crappy customer service job for a whole year and a half to be able to afford to rent my own place and eventually move in with Kea, but now with the savings I earned I'm doing what I want to do (freelance video production and design).

Sure another door opened for you -- just it's across the street, it's kind of dark out, and you need to face the road between you and it -- open, scary, cold and all that.

Now, six months from now if you're living in the gutter and logging on to Sluggy via library (yay for good priorities!), then you can complain that no new door opened.

I wasn't entirely taken by surprise, it just wasn't 'now' or 'real' yet. It kinda hit all at once.

I've got finances in place to last me 1 and a half months, 2 if I stretch it thin, without work, and I've got a place to live (yay for parents).

So I'm not in any real danger, just...overwhelmed.

Keep your reserves, it takes forever to rebuild them. I recommend finding a new job immediately, even if is just temporary and less than completely sufficient (keep looking if you are in that situation though), and don't ever get behind, you'd be surprised how long it takes to catch up. Finances never stretch as far as expected.

I got dropped on my butt suddenly by my old armored car driver job. My boss completely breached ethics, company policy, and the law and abused one of the required polygraph tests (they were required since I routinely drove vehicles carrying millions of dollars) to get personal questions asked about a party I wound up at that his daughter was also at. One of my friends had slept with his daughter and I said nothing, I got fired afterward. I didn't hold a job while I sued, I got less than expected on the settlement, never got my job back, and the neither the guy nor the test administrator got fired despite the fact that what they did was hugely illegal.

It took me nearly a year to rebuild my savings to what it was before that period of unemployment. Not holding a job for any period of time is a mistake.

Find a good temp agency. They'll pay you lots of money for menial work. It might even lead to a permanent position. I could have been a Massachusetts civil servant had I continued my temp position, but alas, I had to go back to school.

I found myself in a similar situation when I graduated. All my life up to that point had been gearing me for that point - that's what full-time education is, right? You get through your GCSEs to be able to sit your A-levels. You do your A-levels in order to get to university*. So, what after that?

I was really excited for about six months, expecting that my certificate would open up thousands of new doors and before long I would be doing something fun and technical and well-paid and making good use of my degree. So where am I three years later? Working as a temp in local government admin.

My goals have changed though. For almost all my life it was simply a matter of education - learning stuff so you could go on to learn more stuff. And that what I thought I wanted from a job as well. Learning stuff.

All of a sudden I want stability, money, a house and a cat. More than anything else in the world I want to settle down (getting old, already?).

You just have to figure out what is is you want next and aim for it. Is it money? A nice place to live? To learn more? To have a job that makes great use of your qualifications? Once you've figured that out you can go about making it happen!

*Or whatever the heck you crazy Americans use as an equivalent.

I know how you feel. 2 1/2 years ago I was in the same position. Finishing my Masters, Married with a kid, and suddenly unemployed. I had been working two jobs (student employment and a paper route). While the paper route was mine as long as I wanted, it wasn't enough to pay the bills by itself. I had been applying for positions but no job had appeared yet.

Like you my parents let us move for a short time to let me search for a job full-time (in my chosen field) for about a month (Had to move from TX to CO though). After that I started to do as Ngua-Ngau suggested and look at Temp Agencies just to get some income coming in. Lucky for me a full time job came along, not exactly what I wanted but enough to pay the bills and somewhat in my field. It is enough to hone my skills in a "real-world" situation. Now that I have a better idea of what I want to do (after experience) I am starting to look again for that "dream job"

As Ngua said Temp Jobs can become full-time positions. I have had that happen to me twice before I went back to school. I am sure there are Temp Jobs in your field that might do the same. I wish I had worked some temp job at least to tide me over.

You are very lucky that you have Blyss and your parents to help you out. My church is very good at helping people find employment including, workshops on writing resumes, cover letters, interview skills, references etc.

Find some group that will help you with those events. I don't know if you checked out your University's Career Center. They offer these things for Students, Recent Grads and sometimes Alums. Monster Jobs seems to have the same thing in an online format and has helped me in my recent search.

Hope this helps and Good Luck

I think there's a danger of overestimating the difficulties and fear of just going it alone.

My experience:
After leaving university I moved home and spent the Summer job-hunting, in a vague kind of way since I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do. Then I was offered a job (via a friend) that sounded interesting, though not something I'd ever considered as a career, and moved to South Wales - the other end of the country, where I had no relatives or friends or contacts apart from my new colleagues.

I researched what area I wanted to live in and renting agencies online, set up a meeting with a landlord and started renting a flat within cycling distance of work. Went back home to fetch my stuff and the next week started my new job. I found the way there with the help of multimap and bought a local streetmap asap!

I lived on my own for 2 years, made a whole lot of new friends, worked hard, got fat (office life is dangerous!), explored the area, learnt about council tax and bills and how to cope with them, seriously messed up my rent at one point, had a ball! Most importantly, I found out that I actually wanted to go back into academia. So I quit my job, moved back home, temped for a year to get the money together and went back to university. I fully expect to do something very similar all over again when I finish my PhD since I still have no proper plan...

The point is a LOT of people have boggled at me - "Weren't you scared, not knowing anyone in the area?", "You must be so brave!" etc. It really wasn't that scary! Really. I have a vague plan to try moving to France for a while post-PhD (assuming I don't get an academic job thrust into my lap :-P) til I get my French properly fluent. Why not?

Of course, it's likely that the reason I was never that scared to plunge into the unknown was knowing if something did go wrong I always have the option to run home and lick my wounds for a while (my parents only charge £20 a week rent and have lots of room). So perhaps I agree with NgauNgau after all...

When I graduated from college with a major in psychology I thought I wanted to be a research psychologist.

But, for that you need a Graduate degree, and I didn't want to wind up six figures in debt, so I wanted to get a job first. But, I found out even the lobs that only said 'B.A, 0-1 years experience required' in psychology usually went to people with Masters degrees.

Then I decided I wanted to go into computer programming, both because I'm such a logical mathematical person, and because just about ALL my friends have computer jobs. So I started taking programming classes at Harvard Extension School, and decided to pay for them by getting an Inventory Auditor job with RGIS, which I will probably wind up getting.

Finding a crap job that I could bear was difficult for me. I'm really introverted and can't stand loud, busy places. So there's no way I could stand some kind of sales clerk job or telephone job where I'm constantly talking to people. I would stand there, get exhausted after half an hour, and constantly feel nervous about how I was being perceived. That closes off a large percentage of crappy jobs for me. Then there's the entry level jobs that go mostly to people who are looking to start a career, which clearly isn't me, because I'm looking for a job I only intend to keep for 3 years or so. It was incredibly hard for me to even come up with a job that I could both get, and stand working at. So I'll take inventory counting.

Well, I had my current programming job already in-the-can by the time I graduated, so that wasn't too hugely stressful. Making the decision to take the job was, sort of, since it would require moving.....but it was less stressful than continuing the job-hunt would have been.

So. I'm getting paid well, I have a nice little apartment in a decent neighborhood outside DC, and I have the time and money to still pursue a Masters' part-time at George Mason.

All that's missing from my life right now is someone special of the female variety. But that seems unlikely to resolve itself any time soon; it never has before, after all.

*hugs Black Sparrow*