Finding Myself in Contradictions and Confusion after Graduating College
I graduated college three months ago and, for the first time, have no concrete next step. I entered college knowing exactly who I was, but now I'm more confused than ever. Thank God!
When I got to college, I knew exactly who I was. In my Common App essay, I wrote about my favorite bookstore in Miami, reflecting on the importance of the arts in my life ranging from my love for Jane Austen novels, Alfred Hitchcock movies, and Frida Kahlo paintings. I talked about how I had a love for psychology and the arts. I was interested in combining both these passions of mine through pursuing an academic career in clinical psychology where I would research the emerging practices of bibliotherapy and cinematherapy–experimental therapies that use books and films in counseling sessions. To achieve this ambitious goal of mine, in my mind, I had to attend a top college.
“It was a year ago that I realized that reading books helped my mental well-being. I later learned that this concept is called “bibliotherapy,” a therapeutic technique that uses books to improve one’s mental state. The strong connection I feel with Matilda and other literary characters like Jane Eyre made all the more sense. As a child, I unknowingly engaged and flourished in this practice.”
-Quote from my Common App Essay: December, 2019
In high school, like every annoying teenager, I thought I was different. I liked school and was good at it. I didn’t mind spending my Saturday nights studying while others went out to party. And, I had a thirst for knowledge and was highly ambitious. Eventually, all my hard work paid off when I got into Duke University: an absolute dream come true. I was fortunate to have loving parents who generously supported me both financially and emotionally in pursuing my dream of attending an elite private school far from home—an endeavor unfamiliar to them as Venezuelan immigrants. So, I got to Duke with endless passion and excitement to achieve all my academic goals and strengthen my knowledge.
Three months ago, I graduated.
Picture from my Spring 2024 College Graduation
Like many other students who go to Duke, my academic plan did not go exactly as planned. It’s common at Duke to hear about people who dropped their pre-med program to pursue a career in healthcare consulting or individuals who dropped out of the Pratt Engineering School in their sophomore year to pursue a career in the arts. But, I never thought this was going to be me. I thought I had found my niche and my passion. However, the more classes I took and the more people I met, the more my confusion grew.
My freshman year was marked as highly “unprecedented”: a word that all of my fellow Class of 2020 classmates know far too well. Half of my classes were virtual and all extracurricular activities were either virtual or nonexistent. The college social life I was so excited for was severely impacted. Face masks were mandatory at all times, no more than three people could reside in a dorm room at a time, and all bars and clubs in my college town were closed till Fall 2021. Even with all these limitations, I still got so much out of my freshman year. I was challenged by my Southern Grotesque English class and my Religious American History course. For the first time, I succumbed to shyness in the classroom, feeling like everyone around me was so much smarter than me. Everyone was so knowledgeable and cultured. This was the year of Black Lives Matter and the 2020 election. All issues that I thought was highly familiar with and was the certified expert on back home. But, when I got to college, I was shocked by my apparent ignorance. Those around me went to Black Lives Matter protests, volunteered in their local governments, and had such a rich knowledge of critical race theory. I partly blame my Florida public school education for this but I still felt like all my passions and interests were superficial compared to everything that was going on around me.
Surprisingly, during my freshman year, I thrived in my friendships and social life—an area I had struggled with my entire life. But, in that hectic freshman year filled with social distance rules and fear of social contact, I made my first true group of friends. I went to my first house party, I got drunk with friends for the first time and always had some sort of social plan every weekend. I then started to engage in all the embarrassing teenage things that I banned myself from doing in high school as I hid myself in books and movies. I threw up from alcohol for the first time, got a fake ID, and felt like a rebel, becoming the type of person I once criticized in high school.
Ultimately, I ended freshman year, still holding onto my fascination for psychology and film. My academic interests remained intact but my values and personality slightly shifted. I found out I preferred to go out with my friends than stay in to watch pretentious art house movies. I found out I preferred to get an A- on an essay if it meant I could spend a weekend hanging out with my friends rather than perfecting my History essay through constant revisions. I know this sounds trivial but this was all so new to me. I had hidden myself for so long and told myself that I was a shy, introvert who would be fulfilled solely by my daydreams, sketchbooks, and films.
Picture from my high school sketchbook
Then came my sophomore and junior year where, finally, my academics and career aspirations were challenged. In my sophomore year, Duke University finally opened up, giving me a taste of what attending an elite American university is really like. I rushed a selective living group which caused drama amongst my friends. I also rushed a business pre-professional group for women where I learned the wonders of networking and LinkedIn profile curations. And, most importantly, I learned about the world of consulting and finance. I was shocked to learn that Duke and essentially all elite schools are a pipeline for careers at Bain & Company and McKinsey & Company.1 Everyone around me wanted to go into these careers. There were many different types of people that fell into this group. There were those who, one day, wanted to go into public service but first wanted to gain some money and network before going off to law school or before they work full-time in a non-profit organization. Then there were those who were passionate about global health but wanted to first go into healthcare consulting to gain expertise and money before “saving the world.” Some also relished in the world of consulting and finance, driven by the prestige and lure of working at a company like Boston Consulting Company–a company with equal prestige to their undergraduate school–the next natural step after attending such an elite school like Duke University. Then there were those who were first-generation and/or low-income and were burdened by their vast amounts of student loans and, understandably, wanted to pursue a stable career that would offer them a six-figure salary after getting out of college. And then there was a large sum of students who were, simply, not sure what they want to pursue, leading many of them to just follow the footsteps of many of their peers. There were still people at Duke who had other aspirations such as going to medical school, academia, marketing, policy work, and more. But the noises from the finance and consulting people were large and relentless. In my sophomore year, it felt like if I wasn’t pursuing a career in medicine, consulting, finance, or engineering I was doing something wrong.
However, throughout this time, I was still holding on to my dream of becoming a psychology professor where I could combine my love for cognitive psychology research and the arts. But, over time, it became harder to confidently hold on to that dream. I finally learned the realities of academia when I started to work in psychology labs and took part in pre-academia programs. I met with PhD students who explained to me the arduous journey of getting a Ph. D.–the low pay, the difficulty of actually getting a job as a professor without doing 10 years of postdoc before then, and the heinous publication merit system. I got scared. Was this really what I wanted to do? Spend my 20s living off my 30k PhD stipend while pursuing a career where only 0.5% of PhD holders actually achieve their dream of becoming a tenured professor?2
I began to stress and question my decisions, major, and interests.
To help me confuse myself even more, I entered the world of entertainment. At the end of my sophomore year, I somehow ended up with an internship at Paramount where I worked as a business intelligence analyst in their Showtime Networks division. The 9-5 life took me by surprise. I was shocked by the prospect of working only 8 eight hours a day and not going to endless hours of studying. I enjoyed chatting with people one-on-one and learning about their jobs at Paramount, working as a cultural intelligence researcher at Paramount Pictures and as a data scientist at Showtime Networks. These were all careers I didn’t even know existed and everyone was so kind and smart and passionate about entertainment just like myself. This set me on a new path. Entertainment research! The world of consumer insights within the field of entertainment seemed perfect for me—a career where I could apply my love for film and TV with my interests in research and psychology. I felt like I finally did it; I figured out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life!
Picture of my office building when I worked as an intern at Paramount during Summer 2022
The next year at school, I, thus, took more advanced statistics classes and even taught a class in psychology research methods and statistics since I knew the world of consumer insights and market research required more advanced data skills. I eventually interned at another entertainment company where my eyes were again expanded when I learned all about the world of entertainment and careers in development, content acquisition, and distribution. I saw, yet, another avenue for myself. I could potentially start off working in a job in consumer insights in a top entertainment company like Disney or Universal Pictures. This could be a foot in the door into a whole new world of creative roles in entertainment. I could work in development, creative theatrical marketing, and so much more! Maybe my fascination with film and entertainment was not a mere hobby but a calling for a possible line of industry that I would find success and fulfillment. This idea excited me but I was, again, plagued by doubts. Does pursuing a career in entertainment mean I have to fully let go of my academia aspirations? Do I even have the credentials to go into entertainment as someone who has never taken a film class or written a screenplay before? Do I even want a career in entertainment where I would have to move to Los Angeles, CA with little hope of ever moving back to Miami, FL?
Unsurprisingly, I started my senior year of college already stressed. I was more confused than ever. I was disheartened by the realities of academia but still had an admiration and calling to pursue a career in academia. I also discovered the field of UX research– a career that many Ph.D graduates pursue after obtaining their doctorate. Roles in UXR do not actually require a Ph.D but the roles attract Ph.D graduates who want to continue practicing research and running experiments in industry without facing the competitiveness and elitism of academia but facing the trade-off of not conducting research for the sake of knowledge and discovery but to essentially win the company more money. Maybe a job in UX research would allow me to have a decent salary but also allow me to conduct research and apply my interests in psychology. However, I was also confused by how much I enjoyed my entertainment internships. I enjoyed the fast-paced work, the happy hours with coworkers, the tangible effects I had in the company, and working with people all passionate about the arts and entertainment.
This thought process permeated through my mind all of my fall semester. I looked around everyone around me. Some people already had their consulting jobs post-graduation that they started in their sophomore year of high school. Others were applying to graduate school since they already knew that their path was academia. Others were applying exclusively to data science and software engineering roles. Others knew they wanted a break from school and travel, applying for Fulbright opportunities. Everyone seemed like they already had their path, and I, well I did not.
Picture of a June 2023 journal entry where I list off potential jobs that I could one day pursue
I applied to so many different jobs in the fall and spring of my senior year–jobs in academia—both in business and psychology departments—, jobs in entertainment, jobs in UX research, jobs in consumer insights, jobs in think tanks and so much more. But, again, my senior year was not only filled with my anxious thoughts about the future. I was also enjoying my classes and extracurriculars more than ever. I nerded out over my health psychology class and about the incredible longitudinal conducted by my professor. I thrived as my university's film club president where I organized our first Halloween horror film festival and I thrived as a Psychology 101 teaching assistant where I got more of a taste of the wonders of teaching. And, of course, I also had a lot of fun with my friends. At this point in senior year, I was already used to the fact that I had a close group of friends–something that I lacked for so much of my life and that many people never really achieved in their college years. In my senior year, I lived with my two best friends while my other three best friends lived right next door. Every weekend I would go to house parties, Greek Life darties–day parties basically–, go to our college bar and so much more. I even got into a relationship in my last semester of college—a very unexpected but exciting development.
However, my senior year introduced another intellectual dilemma. That year I became more and more interested in the world of policy, social activism, and community service. I was inspired by my conversations with friends, peers, and professors. One of my friends had a job in the State Department and yearned to pursue a career where she could make a difference in the world of urban development to mitigate the effects of the housing crisis. Another one of my friends was driven by his motive to combat climate change and find ways to ethically implement the use of clean energy. One of my roommates was driven by her passion for international politics and the displacement of refugees–an issue she had faced firsthand through her nonprofit work in Jordan. I then took a class all about “life within capitalism” and how our capitalist system has directly contributed to or caused every global issue we have including poverty, imperialism, climate change, sexism, and more. Here, I got even more confused. The world is burning, people are suffering, and our democracy is under attack. What was I doing in response to all of this? I was then in the process of interviewing for a consumer insights role at Disney– a job that the previous summer I dreamed of pursuing. But, during early 2024, I became riddled with the typical liberal arts college existential crisis. Did I want to dedicate my life to working for a corporation and conducting consumer research all for the sake of increasing consumer revenue? Was I going to become another cog in the machine? What if I instead pursued a job in a think tank where I conducted research on immigration and education policy? Again, more confusion.
Finally, after months of soaking my last few months of college friendships, finishing up my honors thesis, and questioning my existence and my purpose in life, I graduated. I graduated college completely differently than high school, where I had an idea of who I was. That high school Sofia was a shy, introvert who enjoyed watching movies, having after-school conversations with her English teacher, and who enjoyed writing AP History essays. She was a curious, artistic individual who was going to pursue a career in academia where she could leverage her love for the arts and psychology and who had the next four years of college all planned out.
Picture I took the day after I graduated college at “Senior Sunrise” : a Duke tradition make their way to the iconic Duke Chapel at 5 AM to watch the sunrise all together
But this year, when I graduated college, I had no plans. I had no full-time job. And I had no idea what I wanted anymore. I learned so much about different careers and possible life paths I could take. I learned that I was doing myself a disservice by dismissing myself as simply a nerdy, quiet, introvert. I was also pretty extroverted and pata caliente as my mother would say due to my inability to stay still and my tendency to constantly make plans with friends. I find joy not primarily in academics, but in my friends and family, realizing that I always valued relationships but never truly prioritized them. I’m also not only a nerd that simply soaks in information but I am also highly opinionated. I love arguing and challenging others and having my own thoughts challenged, arguing with my friends and colleagues about the reasons that Latin America has remained a victim to the Global North, the ethics surrounding the film industry, and how companies keep failing to tell diverse stories that are authentic and not simply part of a diversity and inclusion campaign. And, I not only want to give in to my ambitions and drive for hard work, but I also want to do something good for society either directly through my job or through volunteering for tutoring or through creating art.
My goals are now broader–more so than my specific goal of obtaining the Rhodes Scholarship after graduating college to then obtain my PhD in psychology at Stanford. I am now unsure about what I want— a realization that scared me into thinking that I somehow regressed in college. When this is simply not the case. In college, I finally entered the “real world” and noticed that my simplistic view of myself and simplistic goals and plans for life did not match my reality. I am still that nerdy, shy girl from high school who enjoys doodling in her sketchbook and reading Victorian novels. But, I am also highly sociable and enjoy meeting new people, traveling, discovering new cultures, and getting out of my comfort zone. So now, I am still not sure what lies ahead but that excites me. Granted I have my days of regressing to panicking over the meaning of life and what job I should pursue but I also have days where I relish the fact that I have so many different interests and passions. I have such a long life ahead of me where I can live different lives and careers and discover new passions and interests of mine.
I know this is corny and a little cheesy but I wanted to reflect on how much I have changed these past few years. Going to college made me more confused. I doubted my interests, who I was, and what I wanted my life to look like. All these questions were not solved after graduating. But this confusion is such a beautiful thing. I evolved a more complex outlook on life that is attuned to our confusing reality. I am confused by my sense of self because, well, I am a pretty confusing person filled with contradictions. Both extroverted and introverted. Both driven by psychological empirical science and the arts. Both wanting to obtain a stable job with a good salary but also wanting virtuous occupation that does not fall within the walls of our capitalist society. It’s contradictory but exciting. All my contradictions allow me to connect so many parts of life. These contractions have allowed me to become a multifaceted person who accepts and relishes in diversity of thought and is constantly evolving and welcoming new challenges and new changes to my character. In the end, college left me utterly confused and I am so eternally grateful for that.
Mari, Francesca. “What Do Students at Elite Colleges Really Want?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 22 May 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/business/gen-z-college-students-jobs.html.
Harris, Margaret. “The Academic Pyramid.” Physics World, 19 Mar. 2024, physicsworld.com/a/the-academic-pyramid/.