You Graduated From College. Now What?

Last month was college graduation. This month is the beginning of the rest of your life.

For recent college graduates, launching into a tough job market is not easy these days. They are living in a much more complex, fragmented workforce with many overlapping pathways. While their grandparents, and even their parents, traveled through their careers using maps that had clearly marked tracks, this generation required a navigational chart to guide them in the wide-open seas of their next thirty-plus years.

As I write my next book on this transition from college to the workforce, I recently came across a great guide to help graduates—and really people of all ages—figure out the answer to that age-old question: What am I going do with my life? 

Called Roadmap, the guide is by Roadtrip Nation, the namesake behind the PBS television series and educational organization that has its roots in a roadtrip taken in a used RV by three college graduates fifteen years ago. The guide is a practical workbook that offers great tips and plenty of advice from hundreds of professionals about how to build a life and a career, not just find a job. I highly recommend the book for both recent college graduates or those getting ready for college.

I recently caught up with Nathan Gebhard, co-founder and creative director of Roadtrip Nation and asked him a few questions about the major themes of the book.

My exchange with him follows.

Q. You’ve been at this for 15 years, so why write the book now?

A. We were very conscious of not just giving an anecdotal account of our own personal journeys. We didn’t want to write a book that said, “take a road trip and you’ll be cured”—that wouldn’t have been true, nor would it be something everyone could reasonably benefit from. Only after interviewing a huge cross-section of professionals who enjoy their work—over a thousand people from all different backgrounds, creeds, and circumstances —did we feel we had enough information to identify a process everyone can benefit from. Synthesizing the advice and stories we’ve collected allowed us to create a framework for self-construction and career exploration that anyone can use to find work that fulfills them.

Q. You started Roadtrip Nation based on your own personal frustration that traditional career surveys and counseling centers weren’t providing the guidance you were working for. What’s the role of schools and universities in helping students explore career pathways? Who’s doing it really well?

A. We couldn’t quite articulate it when we first started, but our years on the road have shown us that the disconnect between school and careers stems from society’s flawed career model. Students think in terms of what their interests are, but most resources speak in the language of career categories, clusters, and occupations. The problem with trying to get students to think in terms of careers when they’re in this moment of exploration, is that it forces them to look at a list of occupations, pick something before they really know what it is, reverse engineer themselves into it, and hope they like it years later.

I like to think Roadtrip Nation’s work serves as a kind of Rosetta Stone for translating students’ innate interests into real career possibilities. It’s an interest-first approach that inverts the current funnel-down paradigm, and creates an expansive approach to career exploration where you build out from your internal interests rather than plugging yourself into what already exists. This kind of thinking and focus on self-discovery needs to be encouraged further upstream: We shouldn’t be asking 4-year-olds what they want to be when they grow up; we should be asking what interests them.

Q. Career pathways for today’s young people aren’t the same as they were for baby boomers. What’s your advice for parents in encouraging their recent grads in finding their path?

A. We all want to support our children’s dreams, but we have a tendency to usher them in the direction we think is best. Roadmap urges young people to peel away the preconceived ideas they have about themselves to get to the core of who they are—but it’s just as important for parents to shed their own preconceived ideas about who they think their child is.

What you want your child to do might not align with what they want for themselves, and foisting your own desires onto them can lead to resentment and dissatisfaction. Instead, foster their exploration of interests and help them see how those interests connect to viable careers. Does your child love movies? Stay in the theater after the movie is over and watch the credits with them, pointing out the myriad jobs that exist around that interest. Looking for a family activity? Consider making your next vacation or family outing to a place that embodies what your child is excited about. Music, Austin. Technology, Silicon Valley. Kids can be flighty about their interest du jour, so these activities don't have to be time-and-money-sucking, but the more you can help your kids put context to their own curiosities, the better.

Q. What advice to give you to people not yet at graduation, in high school or about to go to college about their careers?

A. As soon as you can, start actively exploring the nooks and crannies of the things you’re interested in. When I was young, I knew I was interested in the creative sector, but I wasn’t proactive about investigating beyond the obvious. I latched onto the idea that creative people could only be painters. I didn’t realize there was a vast constellation of careers—from UX designers to creative directors to museum-event coordinators—orbiting the world of art. Once you’ve cast the net wider, you can tinker with the aspects of your interests that intersect with your skills, and fold those interests into your education to inform the extracurricular activities and classes you take, which will make your education much more meaningful and tied to what you actually want to do in the real world.

Q. The themes in the book seem to resonate with millennials. Who else do you hope would read this book?

A. We wanted the book to provide those who feel lost with solace and mechanisms for forward movement, so naturally it struck a chord with 20-somethings who feel cemented in that “what should I do with my life?!” anxiety. But we’ve heard from plenty of older adults who have told us they were surprised by how much they identified with the message of the book. And that makes sense, because if there’s anything we’ve learned, it’s that the things that satisfied at 25 don’t necessarily satisfy at 50, and staying happy requires constant checking in with yourself to evaluate whether you’re actually engaged in life or just going through the motions. Whether you’re 20 and just starting out the gate, or 55 and feeling disillusioned after years in a career, Roadmap is designed to help you move in a direction that feels right—and to be something you can revisit again and again if things start to feel out of sync.

Jeffrey Selingo is an author of two books on higher education. His next book, There Is Life After College: Navigating Your Time in School So You Are Prepared for the Jobs of Tomorrow, is scheduled for release by HarperCollins in the spring of 2016. 

You can follow his writing here, on Twitter @jselingo, on Facebook, and sign up for free newsletters about the future of higher education at jeffselingo.com.

He is a regular contributor to the Washington Post’s Grade Point blog, a professor of practice at Arizona State University, and a visiting scholar at Georgia Tech's Center for 21st Century Universities.