What happens next?

There was a time when getting a degree felt like have a ticket to better life. Study hard, graduate, find a decent job and earn your money and slowly but surely build a life that you have imagined. It sounded like a decent plan. Lately, I am not sure.

Every time I open the news, there's another company announcing layoffs. Thousands of employees losing jobs and teams being restructured and people with years of experiences suddenly updating their resumes and searching for oppertunity again. Some of them have family, EMI, rent and responsibilities waiting for them at home. I wonder what it must feel like to receive an email that changes your life in a few sentences.

And then there's us...the students preparing to graduate.

We are told to learn new technologies and build projects and complete internships and ear certificate, improve our communication skills and keep updating our portfolio. We do all of that hoping it will make up employable. But sometimes even after doing what are told, the oppertunity just does not seem to be there.

Campus placement ms are not longer something everyone can confidently look forward to. Some companies don't visit certain colleges. Others offer cet few positions. Entry level jobs ask for experience and internship asks for skills and every application seems to have hundreds of other applicants.

It feels strange when trying to start a career when even the zeroth step is filled with uncertainty.

One of the hardest oath is not knowing that the future might be difficult. It is not known g what to prepare for. The technology we learn Today might change Tommorow. The job we are preparing for might not even exist in the future.

Out parents ask about placements, relatives ask what we are planning to do after college and we smile and say we are preparing. What else can we say? That we are worried? That sometimes we have no idea if our efforts will matter?

I don't think our generation is afraid of hard work. We are afraid of working hard and still not knowing whether there will be place for us.

And honestly, I wish someone could tell us what the next five years would look like. Not with motivational speech but with brutal reality.

For everyone entering the job market or already trying to survive in it, do you feel hopeful about the future or are you quitely worried too?