After graduation, I quickly realized that many of the things I was worried about while in school did not matter anymore. The worries about my major, my grades, when I’d get a job, they were still important, and I am glad I invested my time into them, but were no longer weighted as driving factors post-graduation.

Your major. I double majored in music and psychology while at Scripps. So you can imagine curious inquiries, if not perplexed ones, when hiring managers would ask me during interviews about how those experiences would benefit them in their workspace. I focused my answers on my skills. I applied to a lot of research and writing jobs, so I would talk about my research internships and my thesis, both of which were completely relevant skill wise to the job, even if I was writing about the punk-rock/20th century classical music intersections of the Velvet Underground or music performance anxiety. I chose my majors because of my interests, but I still followed my efforts for another passion, writing. To me, writing is and will always be the most transferable skill, required of anyone in any major (also one that will not be replaced by robots anytime soon).

Your major matters most when you’re taking classes to meet those requirements to graduate or one’s of grad school. After you graduate, well that’s your major! No more worries about major requirements or seminar classes! Chances are, unless you have a very specific career path that requires very specific coursework, your major will not affect your ability to get a job in a different field. Most times after graduation, your major will be a conversation starter at most and not the crux of your academic experience like it was in college.

Your grades. (This includes GPA, graduating with honors, and other graduation brochure accolades) Don’t get me wrong, your GPA, honors, and accolades are something you should be incredibly proud of and share when relevant (For reference, I no longer have my GPA on my resume. I do have the years of the music scholarship I received as well as dean’s list semesters, which will probably just devolve to dean’s list over time). But again, unless you are applying to med school or specific post-grad programs that requires certain benchmarks, it is very unlikely that anyone will ask you what your college GPA was.

Even while in school, whether it be college or graduate school, I believe success is defined by much more. Your grades are important, and they can be a positive factor on the job search, but how you hold yourself and work with others is just as, if not more important, post-graduation.

College social life. Meeting new friends outside of college can be rough. You’re not in a place where everyone else is your same age, headed for the same goal (graduating), and literally around every corner tied by the common experience of being enrolled at the same school. Especially from Claremont, this can be an adjustment. You can most likely follow a Claremont bubble past-graduation, hang out with recent grads from the 5C’s in many of the big cities where we move to, and feel like you more or less never left that social scene. But there’s a difference between connecting with college friends post-graduation and trying to extend or relive your college social life. It will always be great to catch up with college friends or talk with alumni from the 5C’s, but just keep in mind that difference of what college social life meant to you then, and what it will mean post-graduation.

When you get a job. I had many friends and acquaintances, a Facebook feed full of people, who were celebrating job acceptances as early as before the start of senior year. And believe me, it was really hard for me not to compare myself to those people. I stressed over the “norm” that I was supposed to have a job before graduation, from the competitive, driving determination of the 5C’s to my parents’ expectations. The stress got the better of me at times during senior year, to the point where I was not even enjoying or cherishing my last months at Scripps. But after graduation, it’s really unlikely anyone is going to ask you when you got your job or judge your answer if it didn’t fall somewhere between August and May of your senior year. You’ll probably get asked when you started or how long you’ve been there, but after graduating, it’s not as big of a deal if you got your job during your senior year. (Also, you will find a job. I am sure of it.)

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Next week I will be writing about opportunity, how do you make it and who holds it?