Where Are They Now? Three Years Later: Lauren Certo

We all know everyone ignores people’s advice.  If people actually listened, we all would have understood the statement: college is the best four years of your life.  I remember hearing that and thinking, “bitch please!”  College was enticing: the idea of being away from home and starting a fresh chapter where no one CARED about who you were in high school.  But the best four years?

And now here I am…three years after my diploma…green with envy.  NOT of the class of 2012 (uh-oh real life!), but the kids who still have remaining years at school ahead of them.  My schpeal follows in suit to a lot of the other stories: I graduated with a plan.  My degree of Television Production was going to carry me out to Los Angeles where I would eventually become the next Tina Fey.  I allowed myself three weeks to move back home with my parents; which ended up being a firm reminder that a city where TV shows are made was where I needed to be. I had spent a spring and summer semesters in LA “studying abroad” interning and learning the land of liposuction and silicon.  I kept telling everyone the move was not a big deal and was just the next necessary step in my plan.  However, on the inside, I was having MASSIVE anxiety….so much so that my second week in LA I had to get an EKG done because I was having chest pains…yes, I was that stressed.

The job market continues to be bad for all of us, but trying get a job in Hollywood is basically like when Christina Augilera wears leather leggings on “The Voice”: it’s a hot mess.  Jobs aren’t something you can just apply for online.  I exhausted all my resources and talked to about fifty scripted television shows all telling me the same thing: no.

My plan was slowly unraveling and to top everything off my college friends that had told me they would be moving to The City of Angels had slowly started to bail on me.  I remember thinking I had hit rock bottom and crying to my college roommate that this move was a big mistake. Luckily, and I say that because it was PURE LUCK, I got a job on a television show.  And since then life has been one big roller coaster, as life tends to be.

If there is one thing I’m STILL trying to learn and understand that I can share with new graduates is: your plan will always go to shit.  I know it’s a hard pill that I can barely swallow most of the time.  But your work plan, your relationship plan, hell even your Plan B all the way to your Plan F will go to shit.

It sounds harsh even as I’m typing it, but the real world can be a harsh place sometimes.  But if I’ve learned anything in my three years it’s that being knocked off your socks by the unexpected whether it is your job, love, or life can make you into a better, stronger “adult.”  It’s being tested of who you are and how you deal new situations and opportunities.

So Grads, continue ignoring all the advice being thrown your way right now as you throw your caps in the air but know that down the line in your post-grad life…your plan will be rewritten, revised, and redesigned multiple times before you figure out your path.