From Us to You: Advice for the Stanford Class of 2017 from folks who have #BeenThere
A year ago this time, I was working with some awesome student activists at Stanford, organizing the graduation protest. I had no idea what the next year would bring (I ended up taking fashion design classes at Central St. Martins in London, working on an underwear line called JST ASK with Alex Young, becoming a FT marketing consultant/coach, etc).
AND ALSO BEING/FEELING LOST AF. But thankfully I saw this coming.
Because I took a bunch of time off, I saw closest friends graduate before me, and go through what I’ll call the “Stanford Identity Crisis.” You leave this bubble, where it feels like everyone is a Fulbright Scholar or on their way to curing cancer — and enter a world where you’re the boss. You’re in charge of your time. No homework, no projects, no clubs or hell raising.
It’s an adjustment, for sure.
So, as part of the 30 Blog Posts in 30 Days Challenge, I asked my fellow Stanford grads to share their sage words of wisdom. As this post grows, I’ll organize by industry or something, but I encourage you to use your CTRL+F feature to search for folks with similar goals to you — and reach out on social media. ❤
Me, Brianne Huntsman (Fashion Designer, Marketing Consultant, etc)
“Give yourself some room to BREATHE. You’ve been on a hamster wheel to nowhere, and now you’re here (yay!). If you can swing it, take the summer to decompress and take stock. Take some naps. Nobody has it figured out yet, even if they pretend like they do.” Brianne Huntsman
Natasha Aguirre (Medical student at University of Colorado)
“The thing that helped me most was just having friends I could be honest with. You have to find people who you can talk to about feeling stressed, or lost, or about that mental breakdown you had a few days ago. So find those people and work on those relationships. Also everyone who graduated from Stanford has anxiety so let’s talk about it openly. And go to therapy, even if you don’t think you need it, it helps.”
Leanna Keyes (Playwright, Stage Manager, Creative Extraordinaire)
“The first year out is the hardest. But once you get your groove figured out, it’s much better post-Stanford.” @LeannaKeyes
Shavana Talbert
“Moving home doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Do your best with what you have, where you are. If you’re unhappy, figure out why and try your best to fix it. Lean on your family and friends. Schedule time to keep in touch with friends from college — we get busy but definitely actively try not to let friendships fade!”
Gabrielle Momah
“The first year after Stanford is a huge adjustment, be gentle with yourself and your support system evolves and grows.”
Sasha Perigo (Developer, Feminist Hell Raiser)
1. Your first job doesn’t determine your career. You still have so much room to grow.
2. Do your best to give opportunities back to others! (I have totally learned from your example Brianne!) If you see a form to nominate people for an award, nominate a friend or acquaintance who deserves it. Send people opportunities that they might be interested in. If a recruiter reaches out to you with a job you’re not personally interested in, refer someone who might not have as many opportunities as you do, etc.
“Your first job doesn’t determine your career. “ Sasha Perigo
Katy Ashe — Co-Founder of NOORA Health
“Everyone is on a different path. Go on YOUR path. Stop looking at other peoples paths. Success is different for everyone and external validation is mostly just a distraction from doing good work. Most great paths don’t go straight. Most paths are not optimized. Just walk on it and make super not to bonk your head too much. You can quit. It is often an act of self love. It may start out bumpy as fuck and you will fail a lot and somewhat constantly so laugh at it but when you are young you can and should take chances on yourself. Love yourself enough to give yourself the gift of living YOUR life. Other people will fear for you, but don’t inherit others fears. You life will likely be more vast and complex and full of successes and failures and loves than you could ever plan for. Give yourself creative license. You will die. You are mortal. Don’t waste this shit by living your life at the ends of strings someone else pulls. Run free and naked and feral and vulnerable through your fucking life — it will be hilarious.
Basically just read “The Sound of the Genuine” by Rev Howard Thurman on repeat and try to do what he says.”
Other people will fear for you, but don’t inherit others fears. You life will likely be more vast and complex and full of successes and failures and loves than you could ever plan for. @Katy_Ashe
Kaitlin Olson (Asst Editor at Touchstone Books, an imprint of S&S)
“Good things (career, new friends, new city) take time. Don’t switch course just because it’s not all happening immediately.” @KaitlinJOlson
Almost a year later, Kaitlin adds: “When things don’t go your way, keep your eyes on your own paper and keep doing the work. Your supervisors/friends/strangers will notice.”
Mara CL (who just took the LSAT, congrats!)
“Ur 22–23. u ain’t shit yet. keep growin. keep makin mistakes. it’s okay, you’ve still got plenty of time to figure things out.
also stanford drama literally becomes inconsequential the second you go past campus drive.”
Erica M
“Stanford makes itself out to be a magical place but *especially* for folks who are marginalized in any way there are aspects of Stanford’s culture that are toxic. I feel like I’ve spent a lot of my first year out healing from some of those things.”
Jovel Q
“Wherever you move to, find communities of ppl with common interests! At Stanford those communities are all right there, but when you move to a new place and start a new job you have to make new friends and actually seek them out. Join a sports team! Go to a church! Find fun events to attend on FB and just chat up random strangers! Build a supportive and positive community for yourself — they become your new safety net in times of insecurity and self-doubt and struggle!”
Kasiemobi Udo-okoye (Comedian, Femme Fatale, etc etc)
Get in the habit of saying no to anything you don’t want to do (going to the party or brunch when you’d really rather just read at home, applying to the program that sounds good but you quietly suspect will bore or stress you, being pulled into a conversation with a stranger when you’d really rather sit quietly on the bus). Learn to start treating your time and energy like the gold it is. @kasiemomo
Emma Nieman
“You don’t have to be in SF or NY or another big coastal city!”
Sophie Carter-Kahn (Writer Extraordinaire)
“Don’t freak out and try to collect new accolades your first year out. Focus on setting up a sustainable living situation and taking the trash out on a regular basis.” @SophiaCK
Don’t freak out and try to collect new accolades your first year out. Focus on setting up a sustainable living situation and taking the trash out on a regular basis. @SophiaCK
Tania A (Designer)
“The most important thing I learned after graduating was to take care of myself. In college, I was so hung up on doing things “right” and proving to myself and others that I was “successful” that I totally silenced my own voice. I ignored my needs and was disappointed in myself when I couldn’t do it all. Learning to listen to myself and take breaks or be alone when I needed to changed my life for the better.”
Avantika Argawal (Designer & Founder of AAndJ Designworks)
Just start. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Don’t wait. Your twenties are the years to experiment, make mistakes and start over many many times before you need to have it figured out. So don’t wait for the perfect job or the perfect gig or the perfect idea, just start somewhere and be ready to fail and move on, because EVERYTHING adds to your experience!
Kyle Alexander (PhD student at UCL Institute of Archaeology)
“The thing that’s stuck with me was having an alum a few years older telling me ‘the hardest thing is not having a yardstick anymore. At Stanford you can always measure yourself against other people’s grades, activities, internships, awards, etc. Once you leave people’s lives start taking dramatically different trajectories and it’s much harder to figure out how to measure up’. Now you really have to work your own path and figure out your own values and successes.”
Yassamin Ansari (MPhil Candidate at the University of Cambridge)
“1. There’s enough success to go around for everybody. No reason to ever be jealous or intimidated by anyone. 2. Just relax. We’re all gonna be fine.”
Daly Montgomery (Marine Corps Flight Student)
“Your friends who live in other places are not having as idyllic of a time as it seems on Snapchat-set up some FaceTime dates. Also the best advice I’ve received ever was from a HS classmate: Be unapologetically yourself.”
Taylor McBrandsky Brady — (Engineer)
AAAAND THEN, my friend/fave crush Taylor Brady (he wrote the following, which is a blog post of its own):
- ) Choose the job for the people, not the work. The buildings I design are fairly unknown, but I take on a very large role in making their structure work. The same cannot really be said for many of my peers who took jobs at bigger firms and work on skyscrapers but don’t have nearly as much responsibility. I work with four very supportive engineers who know when to knuckle down and work, when to chill, and when to cover me if I need to take a Monday morning off to take my cat to the vet. They want me to go home at 17:00. At our Christmas party last year, my boss toasted everybody near the end of the night by saying, “We work so that we can live our lives.” Doesn’t matter if the work is cool, if the people suck, your life will be miserable.
- Put a short commute near the top of your criteria when looking for a job or apartment/home. I know this isn’t possible for everybody (see: Manhattan or downtown SF), but it can be worth some sacrifice, and I think my situation is a good example. I make five figures less at my job than I would have if I’d taken a job in San Francisco, and living in Palo Alto sucks as a young person, but consider the benefits. My commute is a four-minute skateboard, and I often go home at lunch to read, sleep, play drums, chill with my cat, whatever. I have easily two to three more hours of free time per evening, which I dedicate to working out, cooking labor-intensive and delicious meals, and working on my translations and writing. This productivity in a breadth of areas outside of my job would be simply impossible if I had even a thirty minute commute. When I go to San Francisco, it is for something specific that I want to do, rather than the drudgery of a quotidian rush to work.
3.) Write letters to people. Write letters to your grandma. Write letters to your friends grinding away at hard graduate school programs who barely have time to make new friends. Write letters to your friend thousands of miles away in bloody Budapest. Letters afford a special place of intimacy to you and the recipient. They feel good writing about their lives, good and bad, in a response. If your only contact with somebody is a letter once a year for five years, when you see that person again y’all will be fast friends again after the first smile. In our day and age, they are all the more special a form of communication.
4.) Be the organizer. Nobody else will. Get everybody in a group chat, book the campsite, set the party date, pick the restaurant.
5.) Reach out to your mentors. Send them an email every once in a while during the lazy hours of a weekend when you ain’t doing anything, anyway. At the very least you will get a good conversation and a free coffee every six months. But they can help you out so much more, and want to, if you just say hey from time to time.
6.) Learn to cook, especially if you have dietary restrictions. I have met vegans who didn’t know how to julienne vegetables for spring rolls or make a decent tofu. Grow a little food if you can in a home plot, community garden, hydroponic herb contraption in your kitchen. It is so empowering to transform ingredients and make something delicious, to learn the particular muscles that get sore when you make a certain dish, to have skill with a knife, to show off a little bit for lovers or friends or family and then wow them with the simplest of human pleasures. Go to wherever you buy food, pick an ingredient you’ve never used before, and look up five dishes that include it. Cook those dishes. Even with “fancy” fare, it is surprisingly cheap to cook in bulk, especially if you rely heavily on plant-based dishes. If you live near Palo Alto/Mountain View, go to the Milk Pail Market for amazingly cheap and quality produce and delicious cheeses, cured meats, sauces, and herbs. Mi Pueblo has great produce, too.
7.) Take a walk in the afternoon. If you only get one break a day, go outside and walk. Leave your phone behind. Think, even if it is hard, about what you and the people you love need.
8.) Log out of facebook on your phone browser. Uninstall or disable the app. Do not check it first thing in the morning. Think about what you want to think about as soon as you wake up. Social media is not a curse or a scourge, but we use it too unconsciously, and the companies increasingly trade on that lack of self-control. They want you to be permanently logged in, or to do so with the push of a button. Making it just a little bit of a hassle to log in makes it harder to do so compulsively, to tune out what you really might want to be doing. Identify the media outlets that you think do the best work, and that you often go to via links from facebook. Bookmark their websites and go there directly instead. Subscribe if you can. Writers need to get paid. My favorite magazine of social criticism is only thirty bucks per year.
