What next after graduation?

The time has come. I am now at that point in my life when the only question people ask me is, “And what will you be doing after graduation?” I have one year left at university and time is closing in on me fast.

For me, I have my plan, just not the job. I have told my family over a million times that I will be taking two years off to work abroad and travel, and then transition into law school. Simple, right? Of course not. The questions seem to multiply at that point.

‘What jobs will you do for those two years?’, ‘Where will you live?’, ‘The economy is terrible. You know that, right?’ ‘What if you get married abroad’? ‘You honestly think you will go back to school after two years’? ‘Won’t you be too old for law school by then?’.

If I am going to be too old for law school at 24, I better just crawl in a hole and disappear right now. Why must I be so rushed to jump into going right back to school and deciding the path I will be walking down for the rest of my life?

First of all, I have never truly lived in the real world. I have been in school for 15 years now. I have always had my parents to fall back on if times get tough. I have only been holding jobs for 6 years, and those were barely part-time. I have no idea what the real working and living world is like.

Second, I will never get another carefree time in my life as I have right now. I have no boyfriend, no house, a car I can sell, no high position job, the only thing I have holding me back is my mother, and that is why we were given Skype. Right now is the best time of my life to break away from my everyday comfortable life and experience the huge world available to me.

These days it seems like a rushed process to get all of us students in and out of school and into a desk before you can even say “diploma.”

Young people need to be given the time and space to choose what they would like to pursue, rather than just being pushed into it. Everyone tells us we are destined to do something great, or have that great career, but we are never given the time to make it happen.

Now I am not saying that we should all pack our bags and leave our families behind to go travel the unknown and party two years of our lives away. When I say that I am taking two years off work, I plan to be doing honest work and paying my way through life. I plan to be studying for all of my examinations to get into law school and filling out applications.

I just plan on doing all of this far away from home, doing a job that might not be at all relevant to my future, and meeting people that I would never meet if I had just shipped my way directly into another library and classroom.

Championships are not won overnight. Countries are not created in just days. Buildings aren’t built within hours. Babies don’t develop in a blink.  So why should our futures?

Devon has been interning with SpunOut.ie all summer and comes from Detroit, Michigan. Yes… the same place as Eminem.