I just graduated college and I'm depressed...

[tequila4me]

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so basically I should just go and get drunk all week, enjoy my last week or 2 before starting work, buy a big screen TV and other toys for my new apartment, and just enjoy life?

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Totally. You'll be surprised how quickly your degree means less than your work experience. Once you have a couple years of experience your degree will just be an entry on your resume that potential employers put a check mark next to.

Don't sweat the small stuff! (And it's all small stuff).

Enjoy!

[Peter666]

My conclusion about life is that unless you have a lofty spiritual goal, the most it has to offer is sex with beautiful women and therefore the money needed to obtain it. Everything else is BS. So ignore the grades and educate yourself.

[ptmusic]

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This is certainly a tldr, so skip to cliff notes on the bottom. This also may come off as a brag post, and it's not meant to be. I'm looking for advice, both humorous and serious.

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I just graduated from college today, from a small private college in Western Massachusetts (Western New England College for those of you who know the area). I graduated with a 3.0 gpa, 3.2 major gpa. Major in Computer Science, minor in Mathematics.

And I feel depressed. Partly because my life is changing and I'm nervous, but the more pressing and more immediate situation is that I feel like my grades sucked. I'm certainly smart enough where I should have graduated cum laude or better, and I didn't. In fact, I fell quite short as you can see.

However, my ability to do it was there, and except for [censored] up sophomore year, I had good grades. 2.15 for fall semester of sophomore year blows, and spring semester wasn't much better

Because of this, I feel like I wasted my time at college, and should have gotten more out of the experience. I mostly lazed my way through school, getting good but not great grades, and having little to no social life.

I guess the main thing that got to me is that everyone in class knows me as an extremely smart person. I never really discussed my grades with anyone, so no one knew just how short I was of any type of distinguishing marks. And yet approximately 30 people came up to congratulate me, and every single one of them asked "where is your cum laude rope?" After about the 5th person it became extremely depressing. Our school is very small, so I have a relationship with the other computer science teachers, who don't know my grades as a whole, only what they gave me. And most of them too were surprised that I wasn't cum laude or better.

Anyways the whole thing has left a depressing taste in my mouth, and at this point I wish I could go back and repeat college, specifically sophomore year where I [censored] up.

On the bright side, I've got the best, highest job that I know of of anyone who graduated with a B.S. from the school, and what seems to be the most promising future. While random people came up to me surprised I wasn't cum laude, other cum laude's came up to me, surprised that they had beaten me. There were people who were surprised I didn't have a 3.8+, I left that kind of impression on people.

I feel good about the future, and am not sure if I'm letting this cum laude thing eat away at me too much when it doesn't really mean anything. After all, the only reason one goes to college is to party and have an awesome future. 1/2 ain't bad, is it?
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Cliff Notes: Graduated college, got good but not great grades. Feel like I wasted my time at college and could/should have done better.

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I can seriously relate. I was a "star" until college, where I really f'd up. The bad news is that it did mess with my mind for a while. The good news is that it really did not affect anything that matters.

Most jobs do not ask what grades you got. Hell, practically noone in life will ever ask what grades you got. And if you are worried about pursuing higher education, work for a few years and build up a decent resume; I was able to get into a top tier b-school and I'm doing well.

So try not to let it get to you, and learn from your "mistakes." College is really a life-growing experience more than anything else anyway. Just kick ass in the future!

[ColdCaller]

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I graduated cum laude w/ 2 engineering degrees and I would have gladly traded it for a job. All I got to show for it is the rope in a closet at my parents house and a stamp on my diplomas also in a box at my parents house. Just be happy you have a job. Enjoy the time you have now. Chances are when real life kicks in, you will wish you were back in college anyway.

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How could you not find a job with 2 engineering degrees?

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He probably interviews like [censored].

[Dominic]

congratulations! now you get to work until you die like the rest of us.

[Bluffoon]

Wow man you are really hard on yourself. Why is that do you think? Give yourself a break. I often remind myself to be my own best friend, to be good to myself. If I were you I would sit down and make a list of all the things I accomplished in my time at school and I would tape that list to my bathroom mirror as a reminder.

You just graduated College you should be proud of yourself.

[ckmo]

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How could you not find a job with 2 engineering degrees?

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When I graduated the job market was pretty flooded in the area I was looking to stay in. Alot of ppl who graduated with me with better grades/resumes couldn't find jobs either and ended up going to grad school hoping the market would get better. I didn't intern or coop in my major any after my freshman year which probably hurt some.

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COme to think of it CKMO is your name bobby chavez??


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nope no Chavez here.

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He probably interviews like [censored].

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I have no problems with interviews. I turned down some jobs for location/money/type of work reasons. I had a part time job that paid enough that I could screw around and delay real life that I was fine w/o using my degrees for a few months.

[Uglyowl]

You've got a job, no one will really care about your GPA much anymore anyhow after this.

[matt2500]

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Cliff Notes: Graduated college, got good but not great grades. Feel like I wasted my time at college and could/should have done better.

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Oh, man, do NOT feel bad about this. I was a star in high school, a star freshman year in college, and it all went to my head. Bottom line, sophomore year in college I did, um, not so well. Junior year was, given my major, a year abroad, and by the time I got back for senior year, I was ready to study and study hard. 4.0 GPA senior year.

The HUGE factor here is that I, like you, recognized where I came short. This is the KEY sign of a good education - you leave school knowing that you should/could have learned more.

What college teaches you is HOW to learn. Now, if you majored in English, you're not going to become an expert in marine biology overnight, but, given a standard entry-level job in any industry, you're going to learn it very fast. If it has something to do with your major field of study, you're going to NAIL it pretty fast.

Let me repeat this: the fact that you feel like you didn't learn all you could have in college tells me that you learned AS MUCH AS YOU COULD HAVE in college.

[george w]

op,

reality bites