Module 15 · Life transitions · Lesson 3 of 6

Graduating — and other thresholds

Finishing study, a first job, becoming a parent or a carer: stepping into a new responsibility.

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The idea

Some transitions are thresholds into a new stage: graduating, starting a first job, becoming a parent, becoming a carer for a family member, taking on leadership, retiring. Each brings new responsibilities, and often new expectations from others.

Entering a new responsibility often feels bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside. People commonly feel unprepared, even after years of anticipation. This is normal: nobody is fully ready for a role they have never had. Readiness grows by doing the role.

Graduation is a particular kind of threshold: the structure of education — terms, grades, clear next steps — disappears, and many graduates feel surprisingly lost. It helps to create some structure of your own for the first months, and to see this time as exploration rather than a test.

Why it matters

Knowing that feeling unprepared is a normal part of crossing a threshold makes the first months of a new role easier. People who expect to feel confident immediately often conclude, wrongly, that they are not suited to it.

See it happen

A month after graduating, Tunde has no timetable, no deadlines and no clear next step. Friends seem to have their lives sorted, and he feels adrift.

The first read

He feels he should already know what he is doing with his life, and that feeling lost means something is wrong with him.

With this idea

He sees that losing the structure of university is a normal part of this threshold. He builds a simple weekly structure: job applications on Monday and Tuesday mornings, a part-time job, a weekly coffee with someone in a field he is curious about. The days feel steadier and he learns a lot.

What changed

He saw the lost feeling as part of the threshold and built his own structure.

Easy to get wrong

• Believing you must feel ready before taking on a new role. Readiness usually comes through the role.
• Comparing your inside with other people’s outside. Most of them feel unprepared too.

Different perspectives

Reasonable people disagree here. None of these is presented as the final word.

Each stage asks its own question

Erikson described each stage of life as bringing a central question — identity for young adults, care for the next generation in midlife — which can make a threshold feel purposeful.

Stages are not universal

Critics note that the timing and meaning of thresholds vary greatly across cultures and lives; there is no correct age for any of them.

What this rests on

A question to think about. People have argued about this for centuries. There is no single answer — only better questions.

• Erik Erikson — stages of psychosocial development (1950) — A theory that each stage of life brings its own central question, from identity in youth to generativity in midlife. Influential and broad; the fixed sequence of stages is not a strict rule for every life or culture.
• Arnold van Gennep — The Rites of Passage (1909) — An anthropologist’s observation that rites across cultures share three stages: separation, a threshold in-between, and incorporation into a new role.

Try it: Structure for a threshold

1. Name a threshold you are crossing or will soon cross.
2. Write the new responsibilities it brings.
3. Write a simple weekly structure that would help you through the first few months.

Reflect

• Which new responsibility are you stepping into — and what would help you grow into it?
• What structure did an earlier stage of life give you that you miss now?

Use it in the coming days

Put your simple weekly structure on your schedule for the next month, and review how it is working at the end.

Where to do it: My Schedule

The schedule can hold a structure that a threshold took away.