Life Before Noon: A Millennial’s Manual

Editor’s Note: Michelle Moreau is the Director of James Madison University’s Communication Resource Center where she coordinates presentational speaking tutoring programs. She has taught public speaking at the university level for several years.

Graduations are weird.

Life before noon begins with them, timeless ceremonies replicated on thousands of college campuses each year marking the transition between college and the rest of your life.  Those readers who have recently walked, will walk in the next couple of weeks, or did so years ago, probably approach this ceremony with high expectations for that life altering moment when throngs of family, friends and teachers witness your rebirth onto an exhilarating path to adulthood.

But for many, graduation fails to provide the Dawson Creek-esque scene they have imagined through the years.

It would be easy to blame the heat or the uncomfortable robes, the endless series of pomp and circumstance, the tassels that fly into your lipgloss and stick or even the tedious graduation speakers. (They are bad. This year, our keynote speaker made us all hold hands while the sound system pumped inspirational music over the sweaty crowd.  Really? Really?)

Take it from me, a professor and graduation ceremony veteran, the answer to “why am I not enjoying this,” like the last question on your microeconomics final, is not simple.  It involves dissonance.  Remember dissonance?  A concept drawn from the music field, borrowed throughout the social sciences that posits when discordant elements clash-musical notes, for example-they produce some sort of a negative result.  Well, in this case, our inharmonious notes are:

• Your home away from home-your college campus
• Your family, heretofore not a part of your college home
• Your college family, friends and faculty who have cared for you through your years of higher education

Simply put, graduation is the first but not the last time in your life when you introduce your primary and most important caregivers, your parents and family, to the new life that you are leading without them.  Before you left for college they were an important part of your everyday life, now at graduation they become tourists eyeing the monuments of your last few years of maturation.  And without being able to put your finger on it, graduation seems to be less about you and more about working to integrate all the parts of you into a whole score.

And it’s a lot of work.  Getting family from point A to point B easily is like getting the registrar to send your transcripts for free. It ain’t gonna happen, give it up.  Honestly, families invade campus like a bunch of helpless children on graduation day.  Walking slowly, pointing and snapping lots of pictures.  Seriously, you’ve never seen an oak tree that big?  Seriously?

Another thing, faculty and family don’t mix well.  Both groups are authority figures, after all, accustomed to a measure of respect.  Take for example, an exchange I had with a father during our college ceremony this May.

I was in the middle of a conversation with a fellow professor.  We didn’t know where we were supposed to sit.  A father barges into our conversation, “Oh, so you’ve been to one of these before.  How long is it going to last?  It’s getting hot out here.”  I glared at him.  He had just asked the dad-equivalent of, “Is this going to be on the test?”

I wanted to say, “Look, baldy boy, I care enough about your son or daughter to be here in this hot robe.  Sit down and quit gettin’ your knickers in a wad,” but didn’t.  He is a guest on campus and that whole holding hands thing was traumatic for all of us.

I patiently began explaining quadratic equation that is a graduation ceremony:  time = speakers’ rate of speech + speed of students filing across the stage x number of students/number of students who trip.  Bored, daddy-o cuts me off mid-explanation with, “Are you a professor? My daughter’s Ashley. Do you know her?”

We have three hundred majors graduating that day.  I don’t know his Ashley.  Daddy-o looks at me like I am a total waste of his tuition dollars.  I consider docking his class participation points for the day.

But let’s say I did know Ashley and Ashley introduced us.  I would smile and say, “You have a terrific daughter, Mr. Huffy-Pants (I wouldn’t really call him that).  She has a bright future ahead of her.  You should be proud.”  This is after all why faculty attend.  Our last act of affection for our students is to tell their parents out loud what the parents really know anyway.  And Mr. Huffy-Pants would thank me and launch into a story about Ashley’s childhood, probably designed to embarrass her.  All the while Ashley is standing in her hot robe thinking, “I don’t know where I’m going to be living in two weeks and at the moment I’m responsible for getting the whole family to Cally’s before they give our table to someone else.” Dissonance, my friends, is staring down the rest of your life with a tassel swinging in the corner of your vision.

Ashley will survive graduation day.  And she will find a place to live and a meaningful career.  Her teachers and family share some of the credit for that, but Ashley deserves to revel in the feeling of accomplishment that comes with transitioning from college into life.  The customary authors of this cite are hopefully off doing some of that right now.  While their parents haul them and their stuff off to exotic new locals, they asked folks like me to guest post.

Smart idea, huh?  I wonder where they learned that.

Editor’s Note: This post is by Jon and Matt who write about what to do and what not to do with your money after college. Jon and Matt are guest writers from The Corporate Hack, a blog for young professionals on navigation tactics for the corporate world.

For those about to graduate, we salute you. Seriously, congratulations!  College is a long hard road and after four years (or five, or six) you are about to free yourself from an endless cycle of term papers, Monday morning pop quizzes, and long boring lectures.  This is cause for great celebration.

If you guys are anything like us, you suffered through college scrimping and saving, squeezing every last ounce out of every dollar you earned.  You’ve eaten more bags of Ramen than Tokugawa Mitsukuni and the promise of ‘free food’ has conditioned a response remiscent of Pavlov’s Scotch terrier.  After all these years of (forced) discipline you’re going to want to live it up a little once you land that first job.  We understand that, but we understand the danger of that temptation as well. Just a couple missteps in the world of personal finance can lead to years of heartache and burden, and that’s not how you want to start off your post-college life. In light of that we want to offer you a few quick financial tips to get you started on life in the so-called real world:

PAY YOURSELF FIRST
One of the most beneficial things you can do for yourself as you begin your career is to form the habit of saving.  This doesn’t have to be a complicated stock and bond mechanism requiring you to monitor the stock ticker like a day trader. Set a simple goal to deduct ‘X’ percent of your monthly paycheck to be locked away in a separate high-interest savings account. Aim for somewhere between 10-15% of your net income (after taxes), and take it out as soon as you get paid.  This automatically locks away a portion of your regular income for future big-purchases like a car or down-payment on a house. No doubt, this will be a big sacrifice to make, but consider the long term effects: Suppose you earn a modest $24,000 a year (or $2000 a month). If you were to save 10% of your bi-weekly paycheck you would after 4 years have locked away nearly $10,000, which is not a bad down-payment on a house in many parts of the country.

PAY OFF YOUR CREDIT CARD
When money is tight many college students quickly reach for the credit card to finance their weekend lifestyles, which is convenient at the time, but can be downright disastrous if left ignored to rack up hundred of dollars in needless interest fees. Regardless of where you stand now in terms of credit card debt, we want to encourage you to get a handle on your spending.  Living off credit cards is a downright foolish and dangerous way to live your existence; by living off credit you are tricking yourself into thinking you are actually buying things, when in actuality you are merely postponing payment at a rate of +12%… YIKES! Get yourself on a plan and attack that outstanding credit card debt. First, stop spending money you do not have - only purchase items using cash or a debit card so that money is taken directly from your checking account. Next, cut down your lifestyle and devote all of your extra cash towards getting rid of that debt as soon as possible. Get serious about it - any money not going towards food, rent, and your savings plan needs to go toward the credit cards.

DON’T FINANCE A CAR
The status symbol of choice for the vast majority of American’s is the car they drive. Think about the number of people you know who’s single largest financial investment is an aluminum money pit all for the purpose of impressing someone they’ll never meet at a stoplight. If you can let that statement sink in for a minute, you might begin to realize that a really fancy sports car isn’t necessarily the most important thing to do for yourself right now. By all means, someday we want to see you driving a silver Mercedes, but for now you’ve got more important things to devote your money to.  With that in mind, don’t buy a car on credit. Even if your payment is only $200 / month, it’s just not worth it. Buy an inexpensive used car instead for $2000 that will get the job done for now, and take that $200 / month you save and throw it at your credit card debt or towards your personal savings.

HOMEOWNER OR NOT TO HOME OWN?
Upon graduating college and finding a job, many people (ourselves included) jumped into the housing market and began searching for that perfect place. However, as you settle into your first job you may notice those around you aren’t settling into their perfect home.  Besides the recent mortgage meltdown drama and the unstable housing market, there are other significant factors to consider before buying a home. First off, right out of college and into a new job, a new home might just be too much responsibility.  It takes considerable time and money to decorate, maintain and landscape.  Beyond that, you need to determine whether owning a home is worth the money.  A vast majority of your monthly home payment will go to interest, taxes and insurance.  A quick calculation can show how much of your money goes to equity and how much goes to… your bank.  If that wasted money is more than renting an apartment or home, you need to rent.  You’ll actually keep more money by not owning property!

As you step out and begin life truly on your own, be deliberate as you do so. Don’t let the thrill of a steady income and the magic of direct deposit get the best of you.  It’s so easy to quickly overextend yourself financially when you’re fresh out of college.  It’s our hope that following these four financial tips will help you tread carefully and treat that all important bi-monthly paycheck with respect.

Editor’s Note: This post is by Jaclyn Schiff who lists her take on the pros and cons of post grad life. Jaclyn is a writer/media specialist based in Washington, D.C. She blogs about Generation Y-related issues and trends at The Schiff Report.

For college seniors who are about to graduate and join the workforce, the uncertainty that accompanies the end of college life and the start of young professional life can be pretty intense. There are a lot of positive things about being in the “real world,” and there’s also a lot of not-so-good stuff. But one thing’s for sure, after you start working full-time you’ll think about the movie Office Space in a whole different way.

So what can a new grad expect? I’ve been talking to friends about the BEST and the WORST things about life in the working world. The lists that appear below are my version of the consensus.

The Good:
5) No papers, no exams, no homework. EVER. When you leave the office at the end of the day, you’re DONE. Unless of course you decide to go back to school. Then you’ll be stuck studying while everyone is at #4.
4) Happy Hour! There’s nothing like drink specials to take the edge off the day. And grabbing drinks with friends after work is way cooler than drinking badly brewed beer in your buddy’s dorm room.
3) No more esoteric lectures and annoying professors. You never have to force yourself to sit through lectures about the history of Russian Czars or the sociology of the fork in the Elizabethan era again.
2) Implementing what you’ve spent your whole life learning. You’ve spent all these years in school learning things that will help you contribute to society. Now you get to implement all that theory at work.
1) Disposable income!! Yes, the two exclamations marks are deliberate. Odds are you won’t be making mega bucks immediately after college, and you’ll probably have some debt to pay off as well. But, you’ll also have more cash in your pocket to spend on whatever you want. I don’t need to explain why that’s a beautiful thing.

The Bad:
5) Weekends don’t start on Thursdays. Some weeks you’ll forget this rule. And boy, you’ll pay for it on Friday morning.
4) Bad jobs usually last longer than bad classes. Unless you’re REALLY lucky, you probably won’t love your first job and you’ll just have to suck it up. Probably for more than six months.
3) More responsibility. You’ll find yourself talking to other people about health insurance and other topics that previously made you snore.
2) No more summer vacation. Yeah, that’s it. It’s over, unless you teach.
1) Working 9-5. Actually, if those are your hours, you’re pretty damn lucky. Almost everyone I know works more than that. But the point is that your days will be less flexible. You get up, go to the same office EVERY day. No sleeping in during the week. There’s just way less variety, it’s not so fun.

Shocked about these lists? Think something was left off? Want to elaborate? Feel free to comment.