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    Things I Wish I Knew
    Things I Wish I Knew
    Things I Wish I Knew
    Ebook122 pages5 hours

    Things I Wish I Knew

    By Stacey Bowen

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    About this ebook

    Are you a recent graduate or a young working professional? Stacey Bowen spent years wanting a guide for transitioning from college to the workplace. She learned that she wasn't alone-many people resent being il

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNew Degree Press
    Release dateOct 29, 2022
    ISBN9798885048385
    Things I Wish I Knew

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      Book preview

      Things I Wish I Knew - Stacey Bowen

      INTRODUCTION

      When I originally started writing this book, I was recording a podcast called Things I Wish I Knew while living in Puerto Rico with my husband on military orders. I wished there was a manual for life.

      I would start my day with goals I had for the day so that I felt like I was living up to my full potential. I’ve always been what some would call a pusher. I push the limits of everything and never shoot for small goals. As early as childhood, I had a mental map for success. I had a plan to be successful by any means necessary, but the essential steps included receiving an education, having a beautiful family, and building tons of friendships. I thought I would be married by the time I was twenty-three, and I’d have two kids by thirty.

      It’s amazing how I was already programmed into a mindset of someone else’s success before I had lived life. This led to a very anxious childhood and early adolescence of not settling for anything less than 100 percent at everything I tried. This is what set me up for what we like to call a quarter-life crisis and my need to write down what I wish I had learned.

      When going through a major life transition such as graduation, it seems like everything is up in the air, and your head is spinning from too many decisions to make and options to take.

      I remember having both an intense joy and a deep sadness while waiting for my name to be called from the list of hundreds of students at the 2009 Marshall University graduation ceremony. I was sitting in the middle of the arena in my black cap and gown topped with my 2009 tassel. I looked up to locate my family to give them a wave, and tears welled up in my eyes with a sense of pride for my achievements.

      This moment quickly passed when I had a jolt of sadness and anxiety because I had no idea what goal could be any bigger than graduating from college. I had achieved the biggest goal of my life so far: to attend college and graduate. It felt like a sick joke to get to the peak of my life at the time and not have any idea what was next. All I knew was I wanted to move out of West Virginia and be successful! What that was, exactly, aside from traveling and making a shit-ton of money, I had no idea.

      The world seemed to spin a little faster. I got a plethora of congratulations from random friends and family along with the vague but terrifying question, So what are you going to do now? It was the most anxiety-provoking question. It’s as if we young adults just automatically had this thing called life all figured out when, in reality, it was the exact opposite.

      When asking other adults what I should do about my student loans and not having any job prospects or where to live after graduation, no one was able to give me candid directions or advice. The phrase You’ll figure it out became a common response when I would ask. I didn’t even know where I was going to live, let alone how to find a job when no one was hiring, but I’ll figure it out was my mantra for the next few years until I realized no one’s really ever got it all figured out.

      I thought we could at least have a manual for where to start, and maybe I should be the person to start making it.

      I was a first-generation college graduate in my family, so I was officially the most formally educated. I had a serious relationship with an international boyfriend—again, being the first passport holder in my immediate Appalachian family. I couldn’t have been more different from the expectations of my upbringing, therefore leaving me with only guidance from a counselor, my school advisors, friends, and books. These were the only sources of what I thought could help me after I graduated.

      I spent the last year of my college experience gathering all of the references and completing the mountains of paperwork needed for the JET (Japanese English Teaching) program. But a week prior to formal graduation, I learned I was not going to be accepted to the program because my graduation date was July 2009, and the required date was two months earlier—May 2009. It was a huge blow to my confidence to not be accepted and to have a bachelor’s degree that now felt useless. I spent my days working part-time at the mall instead. The plan I had for after graduation had already fallen through, and I hadn’t even graduated yet!

      On paper, graduates are seen as full-blown adults. Haha! Except one big problem occurred when I graduated. We, the class of 2009, completed our college careers during the great recession. Very few opportunities were available for new graduates, so we were stuck working part-time jobs in the service industry or retail. We had very promising career hopes on paper, but in reality, we were all running around in circles trying to understand where we went wrong.

      How were we so blindsided by life? How were we so unprepared? How could we have better prepared ourselves for success? Why did no one teach us or warn us of the confusion and chaos we would endure in our mid-twenties?

      I worked my ass off to move up to a store manager position at Abercrombie & Fitch while dreaming of something better. It seemed like the typical route for recent graduates in Charleston, West Virginia. Many of the employees and managers at my store were in the same place in their lives as I was: fresh graduates during the recession. It was such a shit time to graduate from college with $70k in student loans!

      It’s now 2022, and with a pandemic going on three years strong now, it seems like many of you are facing similar experiences as my class of 2009. How do you gain work experience when you have to social distance and wear a facemask to interviews?

      This led me to the next phase of my adulthood shitshow: having absolutely no clue how to do adult things. How to buy a car without a man present, understand why I was feeling like shit even though I was working out and getting my regular physicals, and why it was so damn hard to make adult friends outside of college. Can we say awkward?

      The gap between what a young adult should know about life and what we actually know is huge! The hard part is that at the moment, we young whippersnappers really have the best of intentions thinking, We know everything. The truth is, we have no idea what’s to come, so we don’t even know what to ask.

      Some common views I’ll share in this book are in the area of health. Currently, we are under the impression that if we don’t have COVID-19 symptoms and are physically fit, it means we’re doing pretty good health-wise. I’ve got news for you: that’s not the case. We can still face certain health factors that didn’t affect our parents when they were younger. A few examples are allergy tests, seasonal affective disorder (SAD), and addictions to the internet or social media.

      The next area of hellfire in life that you will need to prepare for is relationships. Adult friendships, how to make friends in the twenty-first century, and what healthy friendships look like are just a few things we’ll touch on in this book. Because of my life experiences, I grew to be under the impression that if someone does something you don’t like, you cut them off—the end! I’ve now learned through many heavy lessons of adulting that we can, and should, have several different types of friends for different situations.

      I can’t promise I’ve got it all figured out, but I can say I have some insight that will save you some time and money. This life manual for not just surviving, but thriving, is broken down into several sections I feel should be the most talked about. We have sections covering health, relationships, and finances. This book is here to be a reference for when you feel lost. This manual doesn’t need to be read in sequential order and can be picked up at any point. I know researching your problems and questions can take you down a Google and WebMD rabbit hole, and I want

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