Almost from the moment inquiring relatives, your parents’ friends and other well-meaning adults stop asking you where you’re going to college, the next question you can plan to hear everywhere is “What are you doing after you graduate?”. You’ve definitely heard this if you’re a senior or a junior, but even young first years are all too often faced with this question while they’re still under the impression they’ll be International Relations and Pre-Med, maybe with a minor as well. So how do you answer this question without entering a full-blown mental breakdown, or going into a 20 minute long explanation of “If I get this job, then I’ll take a year to study for the LSAT,” then describing three different potential five year plans? Lie. Or, if it makes you feel better, just say something so ridiculous that the asker will have no choice but to nod politely. If you answer absurdly enough, you might be able to save the next poor soul they would have asked. Here are a few of the answers I can personally recommend:
- Facing God and walking backwards into hell (yes, this is from a Dril tweet, but that will likely not make any sense to the asker).
- Retreating into an isolated cabin in the middle of the woods and subsisting only on kombucha.
- When your dentist poses this question and expects you to somehow answer with hooks and a little mirror in your mouth, simply grunt aggressively until he retreats.
- Taking a vow of silence and entering a convent.
- Becoming a Fleetwood Mac groupie and convincing them to get back together.
- Adopting hundreds of succulents and retiring to the dessert.
- Finally responding to all those tinder messages that ask “how do you like going to an all girls school?”
- Making a quilt out of every assignment on which you received an A-/B+ to wrap yourself in forever.
- Watching every Greta Gerwig movie backwards to look for secret messages.
- Becoming an Instagram influencer and joining a company that is NOT a pyramid scheme, it’s more of a ladder.