October 2002

Grass Is Always Greener After Graduation
By Michael Pope*

College students have heard it a hundred times, “Enjoy college, you’ll miss it after it’s over”, “These are the best years of your life”, or “I wish I could go back.” All the while you’re about to bust waiting for the day you can leave the halls of academia behind forever. Whether it’s a parent, uncle or an older sibling, it is likely that they will speak of college as though it were some four-year-long keg party, next to which, the rest of your life will seem boring.

It’s easy to believe them too. After all, they’ve been through college and life after, so they should know, right? I’m not convinced. They may seem enlightened, but they’re falling into a deceptive pattern that can best be described by the cliché, “The grass is always greener.” One of the great tragedies of being human is that we desire what we don’t have simply because we don’t have it. Students want out and graduates want back in, and since students
want out for four years while graduates want back in for the rest of their lives, the graduates are thought to be right.

College students are pretty smart. In fact, they may be in their intellectual primes. It doesn’t take a prophet to imagine what work life would be like. Many of us have even had jobs and internships where we get a chance to observe the mysterious “real world” in person. While it’s true that never again will you be surrounded by as many young people of the opposite sex as in college, evenings without homework, weekends off, and a salary don’t sound too bad either. In college, many of us depend on our parents for economic support. I did. When a student graduates, this comes to an end and they must earn their own money and make big decisions about their home, retirement, and their medical insurance. Although I am inexperienced in both, I will wager that organic chemistry is more complicated than sorting through an HMO.

The media only serves to perpetuate the myth that college life is far superior to the “real world”. Comic strips and television shows depict the drone-like monotony of work every day while all we see of our alma mater in the media is thousands of screaming fans at a football game on Saturday. Networks don’t televise late night cram sessions or three-hour exams. This is because they’re about as much fun to watch, as they are to participate in.

In fairness, college students want to get out of school for some of the same reasons that graduates want back in. The purpose of this article is not to say that college is not fun. That would not be true. The purpose is to get students to look at life after graduation objectively and to listen to the advise of their elders without discounting their own perceptions of the “real world”.

There is life after graduation. I have been in college for four years, and though it has been great, I have wanted out for at least three. When I finally finish, I too will wish to be back in college. Having fallen into the same trap, I will remember only the good times, blocking out the unpleasant. The grass in college will appear greener, but I hope I can appreciate the benefits of life after graduation. Besides, everyone knows that high school is the best time of your life.

*Michael Pope is a graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology