Growing Pains
BY BRANDON HODGES
You wake up in a haze after having celebrated a little too hard last night, but you just graduated so who could blame you? Now, this wasn’t just any graduation. You earned that degree after completing all the trials, passing the final exams, pledging or watching your peers pledge themselves to Greek life, and beginning or ending pivotal fam-relation-friendships. You walked across that stage, shook the dean’s hand, and took those obligatory graduation photos. And best believe that whether it was catching up on months of missed sleep, gorging on Taco Bell, or partying like an actual graduate, you definitely turned up that night.
Now what? The first thing your kinfolk will ask you is, "What's next?" Graduating was good and all, but the real world waits for no one. No worries. You did an internship, you’ve got your LinkedIn developed, and job interviews are lining up. Moving home isn’t even an option at this point because with you being a fresh college grad, companies are fighting to hire you, right?
A few weeks pass, and interviews get shorter. The response time between posting, applying, and getting feedback gets longer. Your money starts dwindling, and to top it all off, your lease is up. A decision has to be made soon, even if it is one that most people don’t want to do.
Believe it or not, more and more students are moving home after college. For many, it is the right financial move. You decrease overhead costs and gain a stable place to live again. But for others, (myself included) what you don’t spend in money you pay for in other means.
As a graduate student, I often dealt with imposter syndrome. IS for short, imposter syndrome is when despite earning your place in that program, cohort, internship, job, sport, etc., you still feel as if you either don’t belong or have yet to prove yourself.
As a graduate student who moved home shortly after commencement (which I unceremoniously skipped), I felt the nefarious tendrils of IS creeping up on me. The more I applied for jobs and somehow didn’t make the cut —or worse, got ghosted— the more my parents’ home became a prison and my childhood room my cell. Now, of course, I admit it is a privilege having a home to move back to. I was thankful for that, but not being able to use my degree felt in many ways like a failure on my part.
In my mind, I had to convince myself that this huge piece of paper was worth the money, tears, and hours I spent on it. This intensified when I realized that despite working all through college, I was at most an entry-level prospect with a popular degree in a city that catered to older and retired persons.
My personal narrative aside, many young adults find themselves in a similar predicament post-graduation. Yes, you worked hard, yes you earned a degree, but so did many other people. This is where moving home comes in. IS aside, sometimes moving home is a chance for an individual to gain real-life work experience in addition to saving money.
Other times, moving home benefits people by giving them a chance to reassess themselves and redefine their metrics for success and general happiness. You become a different person during school, after school, and then you evolve all over again post-graduation. These growing pains are an unfortunate, but necessary part of life that has the potential to better us, but in the end, that’s just a metaphor for life itself.
I turned my move back home into a mark of shame, but in hindsight, I realize that it was instead a reboot. Without school to guide us, we discover creativity and growth in ways that the academy cannot show us. Moving back to the small town I was trying to run away from helped me rediscover my passion for boxing, I was able to spend time with my family that I didn’t get while I had been away. Your growth does not stop just because your plans do. Part of these growing pains is recognizing that things don’t always go according to plan, and that’s OK. The question is, are you willing to take the pain in order to get better? The choice is yours.
Meet the Writer
Brandon Hodges is Mass Communication M.A recipient from Georgia State University who currently resides in Lawrenceville, GA. He is a fan of comics, writing, boxing and movies. His writing focuses on black male identity, hyperbole, and navigating hostile spaces.
