Four to five years and an entire college education later, you’re graduating. The mind tends to fixate on the strangest memories: using plastic silverware because all your forks are unwashed and laying in the underused dishwasher at University Crossings, using bedsheets as curtains when you realize that the kitchen window offers an all too clear peep show of you frying shrimp and singing Beyonce tunes, rediscovering how sad it really was when Gatsby died that one time in English class, watching the battery slowly dwindle in the corner of your laptop and passively watching the moment the screen switched from Facebook to blackness to a reflection of yourself — there is more that you’ve learned in these few years than you can acknowledge now.
Never doubt the importance of your education. In the coming weeks, you will read multiple stories in newspapers about the high unemployment rate and the difficult job market. You’ll soon begin to receive letters about your student loans. You may be on your way to grad school, going through the process of being a fish out of water — a first-year student — yet again. Graduation is a happy and momentous occasion — but after you toss up that cap, there’s a world of fear and skepticism out there waiting for you. Never succumb to it. After all, it wasn’t just physics and history that you learned here at Drexel; it was courage and independence.
Don’t let the stories of a difficult job market deter you from applying for jobs. If you want work, you will find it if you show passion and enthusiasm. Don’t worry about how everyone else in law/med/business/grad school will be smarter than you; you’re more prepared than you think. You may have to move back in with your parents soon; don’t look at this as a regression, but more of a comfortable and financially sensible way to revisit your past. Reflect on your time in college — but don’t be stuck in it. The most important thing you could have learned here is that you will always continue to learn. Graduation isn’t the end of your studies; it’s just a fun day when you get to wear a flowy gown and take the time to appreciate your accomplishments thus far. The very next day, you’ll pick up where you left off and continue with your pursuit of knowledge.
It is our hope that you embrace your new adult life with excitement and strength. Make Drexel proud. Make your parents proud. But most of all, be sure to always make yourself proud.