I’m going to take a step back from analyzing a particular political or cultural issue today to give some thoughts I’ve ruminated upon for some time now.

First of all, I’m graduating.

The road to my graduation hasn’t been an easy one—not by a long shot. But I have made it, and now I get to step into the world.

Wait, what?

Oh right, I have nearly completed one of the biggest rites of passage in American society, and yet I find myself struggling to determine or find a definite path for myself.

Okay, it’s not a huge problem, but as I have heard my professors discuss numerous times, the university isn’t a place where students are supposed to necessarily receive job training.

Part of me wishes I’d grasped onto this as a freshman when I decided to switch my major from chemistry to communication studies.

I have learned more than I could have imagined in my specific concentration of rhetoric and public advocacy, but one thing I couldn’t find in any of my lecture notes from the past few years was specific applications toward a job or career.

Needless to say, I’ve had to learn the hard way about what I need to do if I’m going to have a chance at beginning a career in the current job market.

Some of you may be wondering what the heck I’m worrying about, but let me just say, graduating is a scary prospect, and I know I’m not the first to think that.

What I have discovered, however, is that college is not all about the specific skills you might learn in the college classroom.

College is also all of the little things that come with listening to the endless lectures, doing the research papers and group presentations that made you frustrated, or simply dealing with other people in an organizational setting.

What I’m writing here might sound cliché to some, cheesy to others, or even dead wrong to the rest, but I hold fast to its truth.

As the new class of graduates walk out of Lantz Arena on December 15th, we’ll be joining those who have gone before us in the search for the job of our lifetime.

In this current job market and economic climate, that is going to be very difficult for many (Come on now, I can’t just leave out politics entirely).

What I do know is that our starting blocks have a foundation on what we gathered for ourselves over the last four years or so alongside our classes as much as from our classes.

For me, this has been a lot of interactions with a countless number of people, some tough personal lessons, and a big hobby of following politics and ranting about it here at The Daily Eastern News.

With all of that and my personal faith, I think I’ll be all right in the end no matter where I end up.

To the rest of those graduating, I wish you all of the best. We’ve laid our personal cornerstones. Now it’s time to build the rest of our lives.

Greg Sainer is a senior communication studies major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].