By: Rashan Addison | Publish Date: September 14, 2026
Four months after graduation, many graduates wind up in two different realities. While one seamlessly transitions into work, the other faces challenges of landing a job—even outside of their career field. Yet, both wore the same cap and gown, and sat in the same ceremony.
This divide reveals that post-graduation is not a shared rite of passage, but a precarious situation where life after college may feel like an exciting new chapter or a battle for stability.
Ryan Acquaye and Jennah Attia, graduates from Kean University, attended the same commencement last May. However, they are sitting in different seats. Attia works as a community director for Rowan University, and Acquaye is looking for work in the field of criminal justice.
During her time at Kean, Attia studied psychology and built a foundation on campus employment as a resident assistant and summer assistant.
“I expected life after graduation to be a little stressful and overwhelming…now living it I secured a job while also getting my master’s degree to further my career,” said Attia.
Although she secured a job, she faces her own set of challenges finding work in her career field.
Neuropsychology and human factors are competitive; however, there are various options to get into both fields, Attia explained.
On the other hand, Acquaye thought the opposite. He envisioned freedom after graduation. He anticipated traveling, chasing his dream job, and refining himself through it all. Instead, he applies for jobs waiting for his time to step into the field he prepared for.
“There are many challenges in finding jobs in my career field,” he said. “As a criminal justice major, not having experience is a challenge I run into all the time when applying for jobs. Also, there are difficult tests and hard screening processes like the FBI and Secret Service.”
For Acquaye, the relentless cycle of applying to jobs in and out of the career field becomes exhausting. He described it as being discouraging sometimes.
Their personal struggles reflect a much bigger issue in the world today. According to reporting by CNN‘s Elisabeth Buchwald, new opportunities are not universal. Recent job opportunities are heavily concentrated in healthcare, retail, transportation, and warehousing.
Buchwald highlighted the story of Saul Chauvez, a mid-40s project manager who was laid off at a media company and has few interviews from media companies despite decades of experience. Mid-career professionals with robust resumes face rejection, leaving the barrier for entry-level job positions a harder task to overcome.
This explains the friction in the stories of Attia and Acquaye. While Attia remains optimistic for her options, openings for neuropsychology are slim, which pushes her into higher education administrations’ balancing work and her graduate studies.
For Acquaye, the criminal justice system’s requirements of experience for entry-level jobs makes it difficult to gain experience without already having it.
Beyond financial stress, this post-grad gap reveals the sudden loss of structure from a college class schedule that they have been molded into. In college, progress is consistent and incremental. Students know what’s next. After walking across the stage, class schedule structure is gone and gets replaced with the uncertainty of what the next step is and how to get there.
Walking across the stage or a diploma hanging on the wall is not the finish line. Instead, it is a starting point for graduates to begin adapting to the real world. Neither Acquaye’s patient persistence nor Attia’s continued education determines where they will be down the line, but it is an eye-opening reality check for classes behind them to always be able to gain experience early, build transferrable skills, and be ready to adapt.
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