By
Shaun Clayton
Arizona Daily Wildcat
After one graduates from college, there are usually days upon days of heavy drinking, screaming and wild debauchery. After years of working long hours, losing sleep, losing youth, losing sanity and all the while paying a university for these opportunities, a person needs to relieve stress.
Now, after the celebration is over, comes the searching. Not just for where, as in where the underwear ended up from the night before, but for what - as in "what should I do with the rest of my life?"
It's an important question to ask, considering that most people who get out of college have a good 40 years of life ahead of them, if they are lucky. That is a lot of time to do things - especially the wrong kind of things.
Most people, after all, went to college to make their lives better. Nobody wants to get out of college and suddenly be working at a job where they have to say, "Do you want fries with that?"
College is not the only means to an end, though. People do not walk right out of college and right into a happy, well-rounded life. There is no instant transformation following the diploma where a person becomes an enlightened Bhudda and walks the Earth in perfect serenity, pebble in hand for a grasshopper to snatch.
Yes, once college is over, people have to go out and actually apply the knowledge they have acquired to the real world and make something out of themselves. There is no schedule to follow, no syllabus, no overall plan - no nothing.
That is indeed the biggest fear of all - the fear of the unknown. It's been one of the biggest fears humanity has had to face throughout history - besides the fear of being eaten by a large animal. While the latter fear has waned in the past hundred years or so, the former is still very present.
So, there it is, the unknown. Like the darkness at the bottom of the stairs, it sits there, waiting - just waiting for someone to come down the steps to find out exactly what lies in the basement of reality. Indeed it is scary, especially since a large hungry animal might await you in the basement.
The thing to remember is that life is just one big terrifying surprise after another. Anyone could walk along a busy street and a bus could jump the sidewalk and stop seconds before hitting the person. Hours later, that same person could sit down, traumatized by the incident, and a falling weather satellite could fall and kill the person.
This example shows that, at any time, anything can happen, so people should not worry about the unknown. Life creeps up whether people want it to or not. So, the best thing to do is make a choice, go with it and see what happens, good or bad.
At the very least, a college graduate will always be certain he or she has a diploma, a fine little piece of paper that shows proof of education - unless the paper gets burned in a fire or used as a finger-painting canvas by a five-year-old.
