Graduates ready for a new chapter (CC: Adobe Stock Images)
Sleep. Catch up with friends and family. Go for walks. Sleep. Catch up on your favorite shows. Sleep. Repeat. Those are familiar priorities for those who have just graduated from college after the stress of final exams, papers, and the glory of commencement ceremonies.
To avoid feeling like life is a rat race, in which you always have to be on the move, make sure you savor and celebrate your hard work over the last several years. You’ve earned it! As real life creeps back in, you may start to feel sparks of anxiety as you wonder what is next. You don’t need to make any big decisions in a rush, but you can do small things to prepare for your future as you adjust to life after school.
Whether you already have a job lined up or are hitting the ground running, make sure to bridge the gap between your academic tenure and post-grad life by tying up a few basic loose ends. Ahead are five simple things new graduates can do to hit the ground running.
Create a non-academic email address.
It’s rare these days to come across people who have only one email address. There’s your school email, personal email, and email for random discounts and mailing lists. After you graduate from school, make sure you have a solid professional email address as well. Many schools have a grace period in which students’ academic email addresses are still active after graduation. Still, you don’t want to be caught off guard if you try to log in one day and are blocked. You also want to show potential employers that you aren’t still reliving your academic glory days and aren’t too lazy to create a free email account. Getting a real-world email address is an aesthetic gesture that can say a lot in very few characters.
Back up your documents.
Part of getting a new email address is transferring the documents you’ve been working on for years into another secure place. That might involve getting a flash drive, using Google Drive, Box, or other kinds of cloud storage, or simply forwarding important documents to your non-academic email address to sort through later. Either way, you don’t want a recruiter or employer to request a work sample from your school days only to come up short. Go through old syllabi to jog your memory about past projects so you don’t forget the highlights.
Create a contacts list.
Along with backing up important documents, presentations, and projects, you should begin to keep track of your contacts. This can include students and peers with whom you’d like to keep in touch, professors whose work you want to stay on top of, and, most importantly, professors you may want to include in your professional network. Instructors can be excellent references early on in your career (especially if you have limited non-academic work experience); they can also be valuable allies later on if you stay in touch. You don’t want to rely on an unwieldy school directory or email inboxes when the easiest option is accessible to you right now. Transfer those contacts into your phone or a physical notebook and then drop them a line once you are settled. Making sure they know you would be interested in staying in touch and ask if that would be okay. Doing so will jumpstart your networking efforts and reference options while the connections are still warm.
Update your resume.
Resumes look like simple one-or-two-page documents but they can take much longer to complete than people expect. You might be starting with a template from scratch, updating it with all of your academic and internship experiences, preparing for application deadlines, or simply need to give others time to review what you’ve come up with so far. Don’t leave this until the last minute; update your resume while your experiences are still fresh. Not sure where to start? Check out Jopwell’s guide on writing a technical resume and how to match your skills to different job descriptions.
Start building your wardrobe.
If you started interviewing or attending networking events in school, you likely already have professional clothing. If most of your wardrobe consists of school sweatpants and t-shirts, you may need to spruce things up before you start job hunting. Don’t panic! You don’t have to spend money you don’t have — but you should start to research what you might need in your industry of choice. A blazer? Dress slacks? A full suit or just a button-down shirt? Get at least two of the basics that fit well and you won’t have to rush — or splurge — when the interview requests start rolling in.