By Sarah Tunstall
For those graduating in 2024 and don’t know where to go.
Growing up the 1968 film, The Graduate, was my favourite. Admittedly, it still is. I first read the book adaptation during the first few months of lockdown. I was 17, and utterly confused about the state of my A-Levels and honestly, even more confused about the state of the world. I never picked up on the title itself. For seventeen-year-old me I was more concerned with the daring affair between Mrs Robinson and Benjamin. But here I am, in the last few months of my final year at university, with Benjamin still in my mind.
Early in the film, Ben’s dad asks him “Ben, what are you doing?”. Ben responds “Well, I would say that I’m just drifting”. Now that right there, is where I realised The Graduate hit a little too close now.
I have spoken a lot about this academic transition and with people sharing the same feeling. A lot of them responded a very hasty “I don’t really know”. Others grin sheepishly while their internal monologue screamed the all too familiar phrase “will someone stop asking me about this“. This academic vulnerability, mixed with the classic imposter syndrome, really hits you in the gut. Right at the bottom where you feel queasy.
As twinkling ‘Freshers’ everything seemed so far away for us. We were more concerned with being away from home, befriending our flatmates, staying away from that one flatmate, where to go on the out on weekend and, who is having pre’s this week? Three years ago, I was more concerned about who out of my nine flatmates was eating my mayonnaise. And now I am here, panicked over my degree class and, if things work out well, panicking mostly about if I want to continue with academics?
There is so much finality with ending university. I blame COVID-19 for the lack of feeling when I left college in 2021 so I almost feel unprepared for the feelings I have now. It is very similar to leaving high school. You do the big exams and essays. You have your prom (for me, the Media Awards night at my university). You plan to meet up in the summer. And you leave school. I remember making the friends I have now in university, down to the day and awkward interaction. I met one on the way for a night out because they happened to live next to my friends from home. I met another by following her because she seemed “artsy”, and I just prayed she was going to the same place I needed to be. One of them knew the other friend who I also met through my friends from home (we have lived together for two years now). Whoever gave my first year, eighteen-year-old self, that confidence well done to them. But now I am here, twenty-one, and the most scared and unprepared in a long time.
As someone who has planned – for a while now – to do their masters, get the PhD and teach I should really be the one who sits comfortably. Non-drifting. But I am not. I have noticed myself that in these final months of academic deadlines, the commitment to university really takes it out of you. The Graduate Vulnerability hits hard in final year and it feels as if, out of excitement of finishing exams and essays, no one really addresses it. I hope that when I look back on this that I figured a way out of this feeling, and that everyone else does too.
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