You made it! So why do you feel empty? Navigating post-grad blues
You’ve worked for 4 (or more) long years to obtain your degree, and you’ve imagined what it would be like finally holding your diploma in your hand. It’s meant to be a triumphant moment– and I’m sure in many ways, it still is– but for many folks it can also be the beginning of an emotional low.
These post-graduation blues are more common than you think. It can feel like a struggle to maintain the image of academic achievement, when underneath you might been feeling empty, anxiuos, and unsure of what comes next. Post-graduation depression often pulls us from the excitement that we expect from graduation, and focuses in on the weight of expectations and pressure to succeed.
Navigating this transition can feel daunting, and it’s normal to experience mixed emotions during this period from joy, to self-doubt. In this post, we’ll be breaking down the reasons you may be feeling post-grad depression or feeling the graduation blues, and exploring coping strategies on how to navigate feeling lost after university.
The challenging side of graduation
While graduating is a time to celebrate new beginnings, many people experience that shift, from being in school to suddenly losing all that structure, to be incredibly disorienting. Student life, with the integral goal of obtaining your degree, is filled with structure, goals, meaning, and identity. Being a student is challenging in its own ways, but graduating and losing those identity and meaning-making aspects of school can be incredibly tough.
We might expect to feel joy from the freedom of being out of school, but at the same time the open-endedness of the future can feel overwhelming too! All of a sudden, you’ve lost the achievement in academic milestones, you’re separated from your peers and community, and the weight of uncertainties about what comes next can lead to feeling aimless, anxious, and empty.
All of this is compounded by the ideas around what you ‘should’ feel when you graduate. You ‘should’ be so happy and excited for the future, that you shouldn’t be feeling sad or anxious after graduating. These post-grad blues are rarely talked about, and so you might also be feeling ashamed for not feeling what others seem to be. But in truth, coping with change after university is a common struggle, especially if graduating from a good school with a good degree has been the motivator for working so hard for so long.
Expectations and pressure for the future
Graduation can also come with the pressure to know what’s next in your life, and to finally create and start living up to the cultural or family expectations of the life you’re supposed to live now that you’ve graduated.
Graduation may mean the expectation to start having a stable, respectable career. So when life after graduation feels uncertain, or if you don’t land a “successful” job right away, it can bring up intense guilt, shame, or a sense of failure.
While you may be feeling the weight of these pressures and cultural expectations, there often isn’t the space to talk about how these pressures are impacting you, so you’re left feeling guilty, like you’re letting yourself and your family down, and like you’re not good enough. All of this just compounds and worsens the already-difficult transition out of school, where you lose your sense of routine but potentially also your sense of identity as well.
What to do about post-grad blues
While it may be helpful to to understand why you feel this way, let’s explore what can you do to start feeling a bit better. Below are some tips to help you with your post-grad mental health and overall wellness.
1. Validate your feelings
It’s okay to feel lost, and everyone feels lost at one time or another. Graduation is a huge life change, and there can be a whole host of emotions that come with life transitions, like depression, anxiety, and even grief for your student identity and life you lived. You’re not broken or wrong for feeling this way, and multiple things can be true at once—you can both be excited and joyful for the future, and also feel nervous, anxious, or sad.
2. Establish a routine
One of the things school provided was a schedule and routine for your week. You knew when you had classes, and you knew when you were expected to show up for exams, labs, and get assignments done. Giving yourself some structure can help curb the overwhelm, reduce the number of decisions you have to make just to get through the day, and prevent the feeling of drifting through your life.
Try to give your days and your time some structure. Maybe scheduling some time to take a workout class with some friends, or join a club that meets at the same time every week. All this can help break up the monotony of job searching and help add some different activities into your days.
3. Limit social media comparison
Everyone’s timeline is different for their lives and careers, and social media only shows us the highlight reel or what they choose to share—not the true, raw, full experience of the ups and downs of life after graduation. Use social media to connect with people you love and care about, but don’t let others’ lives be the only model of success you use to compare your journey to.
4. Reconnect with community
Another part of university or college life, is that you also had a built-in community of peers and friends to talk to about the struggles of your course load or that professor no one liked. Shared experiences and feelings reduce isolation and shame. See if you can talk with friends who might be going through the same thing, or look into your local community to see where you might be able to connect with others going through the same thing.
5. Volunteer or try something new
Getting involved in causes or learning something outside of your academic identity can help you find new sources of meaning and purpose, all while doing something that you can hopefully enjoy without putting pressure on yourself.
6. Talk to a therapist
A licensed professional— whether that be a registered psychotherapist, social worker, psychologist or psychiatrist— can help you unpack and explore the identity shifts you’re in the midst of, as well as help you navigate the various transitions in adulthood as they come. Especially if your therapist is familiar with the cultural expectations, they may be able to help you understand how those messages and expectations are impacting you, and what you can do about it. You can meet our team of qualified and compassionate therapists if you’re starting your search.
7. Give yourself time
This last tip— is just a reminder that transitions take time. Do you remember how challenging it was when you first started university or college? And now see how far you’ve come, to graduating! You don’t have to have everything figured out right after graduation— and that’s okay.
If you’re feeling lost, empty, or emotionally drained after graduating, you’re definitely not alone. And specifially for Asian Canadian graduates, the weight of cultural and familial expectations and the uncertainty of the beginnings of your career can create a perfect storm for post-graduation depression. But these feelings are not a personal failure—they're a natural response to a major life change and transition.
Therapy can offer more than just a space to talk. It can be a place to unlearn pressure, process grief over a past chapter, and begin imagining a future on your own terms. It takes tremendous strength in seeking support, and healing doesn’t mean giving up on your culture or your values—it means learning to carry them in a way that doesn’t feel so heavy.
