“Change is the only constant in life.”
― Heraclitus

With the fellowship coming to a close, I can’t help but think about the transition to come and reflect on past changes. To many people, change is scary. It usually involves some level of uncertainty and fear of the unknown has seemingly always been present in the human race. As a child, we deal with change fairly consistently, going from grade to grade annually, changing clothes due to physical growth and the changing of interests as children discover themselves. One of the biggest changes to children is puberty, where different physical and hormonal changes occur for the first time, although many children seem to welcome, and even want to accelerate, becoming an adult (Ignorance is bliss lol). As adults we still constantly deal with change, some small but usually on a grander scale. Many young adults go to college or the armed forces, where they live for the first time outside the veil of parental control. Also many young adults will become parents themselves in the future, one of the biggest changes humans potentially face. However, in this blog I will focus on a change that occurs usually after college and /or armed forces, becoming a working adult.

The main reason becoming a working adult is such a huge change for a young adult is that most of them have never worked a full time job. Some get summer jobs that are occasionally full time but they are for a limited time only and are usually on a smaller scale. For a 22 year old recent graduate, going to a lifestyle of working at least 40 hours a week, every week, FOR-EV-ER, can be a huge transition. No more summer breaks, you will work ALL summer unless you have vacation days, which aren’t always available, especially for new hires. No more long holiday breaks, you may actually only get about 3 days off during a period where you usually get 3 weeks off. Instead of a week for Easter, you get one day. Also, Spring Break no longer exists. For about 18 years out of the 22, they were students. Students may not know what the next grade holds entirely, but they know it is coming. As an adult, you don’t have that certainty. People have been laid off or fired unexpectedly many times throwing their lives into turmoil. Some have been stuck in dead end jobs that offer no growth. Also, these are young people who for the most part have always been surrounded by peers because everyone in your grade is around your age. Now as a working adult, you are probably the youngest at your job, and many of your co-working peers are old enough to be your parent, or grandparent. You have to learn about boring stuff like insurance and 401ks and must now also pay back your loans from school. Some students will go to post graduate education but that also extends the student lifestyle further into adulthood which may make it harder to change. Becoming a working adult can be scary and overwhelming, especially since it is pretty much an abrupt change, with many starting this new lifestyle within weeks of graduation.

With that said, I’d like to offer some advice to the new working adults and anyone going through a transition. Simply embrace it. You can’t stop change from occurring, plus change makes life more interesting. Usually the fears of the unknown aren’t as serious as they may seem. Fear makes the wolf bigger than it is. If it won’t kill you or seriously harm you, why should we fear it? Why fear whether you made the right career decision, usually it’s not hard to start over as a young adult. Why fear the unknown, when in reality every moment is unknown because no moment is certain. Fear will have you working the same safe job because of the fear of failure or uncertainty. If you never face your fears, you will never realize how good it feels to conquer a fear. Plus usually after the ordeal is over, you realize there was nothing to fear in the first place. So to all young adults and anyone else going through a big transition, embrace it and don’t take fear along for the ride. Feed your optimism, not your fears.