- HEY WOW ARE YOU GRADUATING THIS YEAR?
- THAT IS SO AWESOME.
- Seriously, congratulations, you have achieved something wonderful, whether you’ve made it through high school, college, grad school, Pre-K, whatever.
- Because school is challenging no matter what level you’re at. Those challenges can be academic, social, giant robot related, whatever, everyone knows making it through to the end is a BITCH.
- BUT YOU DID IT!
- Take a minute to breath and appreciate what you’ve accomplished before you freak out about your next phase of life.
- If you’re graduating high school and you’re worried about college now, trust me, you will survive this too. There will be new challenges, such as doing your own laundry, forcing yourself to that 8 am class with the boring professor you hate, limiting the number of hot pockets you should eat in a day, and trying not to watch all of Buffy in less than a week. You got this.
- My most basic college advice is: You will only get as much out of it as you put in. I wish I had learned this in high school, but it really paid off for me in college. I may have reclused myself from the internet most of the time I was in Art School, and pulled countless all nighters to work on projects and didn’t do quite as much socializing as I know a lot of college kids do, but that hard work earned me the respect of my professors (now my professional peers), a 3.9 GPA when I graduated, and contracts with a bigname publisher by the time I was a Junior. Put in the time.
- ALSO LET ME SAY THERE IS NO SHAME IN GOING TO COMMUNITY COLLEGE, AND FUCK ANYONE THAT SAYS OTHERWISE. I took community college classes for two years, got all of my basics out of the way, and transferred a TON of credits that would have cost me 4 times as much to take at the private college I ended up graduating from.
- Also accept the fact that there’s a good chance that you’ll be paying back student loans eventually anyway. You may as well be paying off a school you actually WANTED to go to, studying something you’re honestly passionate about. Paying my loans knowing that I’m paying off an education for comic books is much easier than when I was paying bills to study what I was originally in school for.
- If you’re graduating college and you’re panicking because your dream job hasn’t been handed to you yet, calm down. Trust me, it takes time. After that first project I had while I was in school, I spent 2 years after I graduated desperately struggling to find ANY other comic work, and being horribly depressed when it wasn’t happening. But I kept working my other odd jobs, paying bills, and only over the last year have I been able to get the sort of work I’ve been really wanting. These things take time, try to remain optimistic, and keep looking for opportunities.
- You are young NOW and you wont get any younger. DO STUPID SHIT NOW. TRAVEL FOR NO GOOD REASON. ALWAYS WANTED TO VISIT NEW YORK? FUCKING DO IT. GRAB A FRIEND OR TWO AND MAKE IT HAPPEN. ARE YOU GOING TO WAIT UNTIL YOU HAVE LIKE, A FULL TIME JOB AND SERIOUS RESPONSIBILITIES LIKE BABIES BEFORE YOU DO STUFF LIKE THAT? THAT’S CRAZY TALK. GO SKY DIVING OR SOME SHIT.
- LOVE, A 27 YEAR OLD WHO HAS GONE TO 2 DIFFERENT COLLEGES AND CHANGED HER MAJOR THREE TIMES AND TRAVELS AS MUCH AS SHE CAN AND HAS REALLY DUMB STUDENT LOANS AND IS PRETTY MUCH HAPPY WITH HER LIFE RIGHT NOW.
Growing Up
Andrew Jackson JihadGrowing up
really fucking sucks
I want to fall in love
but I don’t love anybody
And soon, there will be nobody
who will want to fall in love with me
And I’m afraid I don’t care
