Commencement, Chaos and COVID-19

I graduate next month!

Wow that sounds scary. While I am ready to leave behind the stress of exams and all-nighters spent staring at my laptop screen cranking out research papers, I don’t think I’m quite prepared for whatever comes after I cross the (virtual) stage in May. Yes, that’s right. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic, I am finishing up my undergraduate degree completely online. Soon, I’ll be joining the ranks of Carolina alumni as a member of The Class of 2020: Least Likely to be Employed. 

Originally, I wanted to start this blog as an ode to my university years, an outlet for reflection and a sort of time capsule before I graduate on to my next phase of life. While all of that is still true, the birth of my blog comes also at an opportune time to document the impacts that the novel Coronavirus will have on a fresh college graduate attempting to figure out her life plans and cope with all this ambiguity. So you’re welcome, dear readers, for what is bound to turn into a melodramatic, albeit entertaining account of my job search. 

If you have already read the About page on the site, you’ll know that I marvel in the unique freedom that comes with being a student. Up until now, my life has been neatly sorted out semester by semester, and time has cycled in a consistent and comforting fashion. I’ve never had to worry too much about a situation that I found myself in because I’ve known that in six months everything would reset as it always did. You can probably imagine the anxiety I feel about the current state of things. I suppose the comfort of the student calendar is why so many second-semester seniors freeze up with dread upon the thought of choosing a career that they may be stuck with for the rest of their lives. Add a global health crisis and fruitless job market on top of that, and you’ve got a scenario that my mom says she “does not envy me” for being in. 

For background, I’m a public relations major in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media and a German minor at the University of North Carolina. At the beginning of my senior year, I had just returned from a life-changing six-month exchange in Germany and since then have been convinced that I will remain unfulfilled until I make my return overseas. After meeting friends from all over the world, adapting to an entirely new culture and learning to speak the native language, I didn’t want to go back to the United States and be stuck in an office job. Throughout my senior year, I began to research international companies, continue improving my German and think strategically about how I could find a job that might take me abroad again.

Since the Coronavirus struck, I’ve felt my dreams come tumbling down with the realization that the world I wanted to be a part of is no longer a viable option. I won’t be able to take the summer off to travel or work my part-time waitress gig until things pick back up either. Additionally, strategic marketing and communication positions are getting harder to come by now that companies must focus their finances on keeping day-to-day operations afloat. I’ve spent hours perusing job boards, wondering how I am supposed to find a job that puts me on the right path. Speaking for all students, it’s hard to cope when you have dreams and ambition and are scared to make a wrong first move that may lead you away from those goals. 

However, as the time to take that first step gets nearer every day, I’ve realized that having “the rest of my life” to work on my career could be a good thing. It doesn’t mean that I have to be stuck wherever I start. It means I simply must start somewhere—I’ll figure the rest out after that. 

This change of perspective was due in part to an introduction to the chaos theory in a career development course I took this semester at Carolina. Originally created to explain the scientific variables that lead to things like weather prediction models, the chaos theory aims to illustrate a balance between complexity and order. It states that within a chaotic system, important patterns will emerge, and while these patterns are definable, they are still susceptible to outside factors. 

Look at it this way: I will soon get my bachelor’s degree from UNC-Chapel Hill. Seems like a kind of random life event, right? Well, no not really, if you consider all of the social and environmental factors that went into my decision to attend school here. I’m a resident of North Carolina and I got pretty good grades in high school. UNC is the top public school in the state, so it’s a nice option for the child of a middle-class household. But would I have attended if my older sister hadn’t come here before me? Now we are taking some more complex variables into account. What about the fact that I’m even a resident of North Carolina? To explain that, you’d have to take into consideration that my father grew up in the state and my mother attended Duke University in Durham before they both landed jobs at IBM in Charlotte and built a cute little North Carolina family. 

So, what I’m trying to say is that important life developments such as graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill do not occur in isolation. All aspects of family, friends, culture, and spirituality play an important role, as do environmental systems such as perceptions and realities of markets, economic conditions, and cultural traditions. It’s like one huge, convoluted, non-linear butterfly effect whose outcomes you can’t clearly understand until after the fact. And while it may seem like there is a pattern that has emerged in a given system, such as me being a resident of North Carolina, who is to say that another outside factor won’t come along to disrupt it? 

It is this inevitable uncertainty that I am working on gaining comfort with. Life is chaotic and there is no way to plan for all of the attractors, opportunities and roadblocks I will encounter. 

On the bright side, while I may be forced to search outside of my comfort zone when it comes to the industry, location or job title of my first position, the chaos theory leads us to believe that there are an infinite number of possibilities that may arise as a result of any given situation, factor, choice, etc., and to me, this is exciting. It means that at any moment, life can still start in a completely new direction, just as it did when our days were cycled by semester. I do still have dreams and ambitions, but I know not to expect one linear path to achieving my goals, or even for my goals to remain unchanging over the years. Who knows, one day I may look back and realize that it was COVID-19 that led me in the direction of my real passion. 

In conclusion, this too shall pass, as I suppose all things do. 

If you are a senior like me, I hope you embrace the certain uncertainty of the chaos theory and try to find some comfort during your job search. Keep in mind what an accomplishment it is to receive a degree, regardless of whether there is a commencement ceremony or not, and remember that our journey is just beginning. If you are a parent or professor, reach out to your students and make sure that they are hanging in there. We face a lot of anxiety about the future, especially now, when everything is so unknown. And finally, if you are an employer, I hope you take just a little extra notice when you see “Class of 2020” on a resume, because we are facing some real “unprecedented times” here!