Graduation Anxiety

Graduation anxiety is the pressure students feel when school is ending, labor-market competition is visible, and every idle period seems to weaken the next application. In EP36 第一批有毕业焦虑的00后，开始学会用实习「饮鸩止渴」, 水仙 describes internships as a way to avoid being idle and to fill a resume, while 曼妮森 pushes that anxiety toward clearer Internship As Career Exploration goals.

Vol. 169 高考只是个开始，Don’t Waste Your Life extends the anxiety earlier, into the moment just after gaokao. AI makes students and parents worry about whether majors, programming, internships, graduate school, or civil-service exams will still make sense four years later, but the hosts treat university as a buffer period for Learning How To Learn and College Career Preparation rather than a period to predict everything upfront.

Key Claims

• The episode treats internship accumulation as both a labor-market response and an emotional regulation strategy.
• Competition, peer comparison, resume gaps, and unclear direction can make work feel safer than reflection.
• Graduate school, civil-service exams, gap years, and repeated internships can all function as different ways of managing risk under uncertainty.
• Anxiety relief is not the same as direction; the episode warns that work can become “drink poison to quench thirst” if it only numbs the pressure.
• AI anxiety can begin before college, but trying to forecast the whole market is weaker than building adaptable skills and evidence during the undergraduate years.

Connections

• Internship As Career Exploration — more deliberate alternative to anxious accumulation.
• Big Company Halo — recognizable brands can calm anxiety by making the resume feel stronger.
• Workplace Hidden Rules — anxiety often grows when students enter organizations without knowing implicit norms.
• 水仙 and 曼妮森 — speaker perspectives that define the tension.
• College Major Choice, College Career Preparation, and Learning How To Learn — Vol. 169’s earlier source of anxiety and response.