Being a fresh graduate is not easy, as for leaving college was like leaving your last comfort zone. You and your friends go separate ways, and you sometimes feel like you are all alone. But most importantly, you start to wonder about your next steps in life – and of course, you need to get a job.
Some people graduated with specific goals in mind, planning their career path since the first day of college. Joining clubs as a freshmen, taking some leadership roles as a sophomore, interning here and there as a senior, and graduating with a job offer in hand, all sorted out.
But what if things did not work out as one wishes. One start to doubt yourself and wonder whether she should stick with the plan or try something else, taking any job opportunities that come. This is a tough decision, as it could mean signing contracts, devoting all her time to the job and sticking at this job for years, closing the doors to the dream. To understand more of the decision, we could use economics to help explain.
The story of getting jobs involves opportunity costs, and no matter what one chooses, the utility of the second best decision that one didn’t make is going to be high. Accepting an offer is tempting, as applying for a job is tiresome. Not only that job searches, bunch of emails and calls, and rounds of interviews take time, but the waiting period and the disappointing moments could slowly kill you. After some time, you would decide to take whatever job because you just want to get out of this loop. But the opportunity cost for giving up is also high. As one barely knows when the optimal time to let go is, the fact that trying just a little bit harder might actually change everything, will prevent you from making that decision.
But how long should one keep waiting then? As the time passed by and the money in your bank account depleting, you might need to reconsider. Here, looking at the diminishing utility might help. In the application process, after rounds and rounds of interviews with the results ending in a rejection, getting a call for an interview will not excite you anymore. The utility of being free from work would also diminish too. After a while, having a lot of free time would no longer give you that much happiness, as watching all your friends having careers and living in different lives becomes a bad thing. You cannot relate with them anymore and might feel left out.
Finally, some people might avoid all the above problems by going for an alternate option. Going to graduate school will leave behind all the hassle of finding jobs, at least for now! However, unless you are born with a silver spoon, you might also face the risk of whether this is the optimal level of education for your career. Is the benefit illusional, is it worth all the money and time spent, or at least is the signalling effect even working?
Despite economics helps us understand more of the issue, there is still one problem; it is impossible to know your position in the model, nor getting maths done. The optimal level of waiting or education is individual’s, in addition, in some case good things might sometimes just be out of luck. As a result, do not worry too much. After all, we are still young, and there’s many more for us to explore.
Everything is gonna be alright.
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