I'd honestly not spent much time pondering what my graduation day would be like. The thought of giving my University yet more money didn’t help the ambivalence, as by this point I’d grown a singular mistrust in their spending habits. No one at Bath Spa wanted another ‘Wonky Wednesday’ (yes that was genuinely what they called it) mental health campaign situation after all! Apart from my trepidation about the day itself however, I was excited to be done with university, to see what comes next.
And then a pandemic happened.
Here's what the last few months have taught me.
Graduation is partly needed closure and partly an extremely intimidating process, which I suppose is the same for every year group that goes through it. However, this year had an extra special spanner in the works that none of us could have planned for that took away the feeling of closure. Now, don’t get me wrong it was absolutely necessary that the events be cancelled and the classes to be moved online, but the lack of closure has made moving beyond university difficult.
I've always been one to roll my eyes at the line 'just wait until you enter the real world' but as reductionist as that adage is, it holds some water with me now. Coming out of the tunnel vision of university to face a world reeling from a viral outbreak has meant that for a lot of us, our various future plans are now completely obsolete. It didn't feel like entering 'the real world', but it did feel like an entirely different world from the one we’d started the year in. One that I was entirely unprepared to deal with.
The fact of it is that the job market we are going into is nothing like the one last year's graduating class went into: The class of 2020 shares a singularly unique experience that I don't know how to come to terms with in any particularly convenient fashion. 2020’s post-university culture shock has been coupled with anxiety of trying to find a place in a world that is undergoing dramatic change, revolution and upheaval. It's not a bad thing of course, important fights are finally being fought and they need our active attention and support, but at times it feels like there is no stable ground left to cling to.
So, where do we go from here? I can't speak for the rest of my graduating class, but something I've always done whether the world feels like it's in my control or not is write. It's the one thing that keeps me sane, really. That's what I intend to do now, and I'll be posting it here when I do so.
I don't know where the future is going to take me, but where else is there to go but up, right? Congratulations, class of 2020. And good luck, 2021- we're rooting for you.