A sample of The 9 Things Every Graduate Should Know
The 9 Things Every New Graduate Should Know
Brianna Wiest
Thought Catalog Books — thoughtcatalog.com
Copyright © 2026 Brianna Wiest.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior written consent and permission from Thought Catalog.
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First Edition, Limited Edition Print
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-965820-17-9
Dedicated to the
Elizabethtown College
class of 2024.
Introduction
Throughout my career, I have always believed that the muse is not someone we write about but someone we write to—an audience of one. That muse, for me, has always been my younger self. So as I reflected upon what I would like to share with you today, I found myself returning to that idea. If I really were standing in front of an audience of one, and that one was my own soon-to-be Elizabethtown College graduate self…what would I want her to know?
What I know for sure is that there will be moments ahead of you, if they have not yet arrived in some form already, where you may find yourself lost or unsure of what’s next. Sidelined by the imagined pressure of what other people think. Not knowing who or what is right for you. Standing on the precipice of great change and terrified, or fighting a quiet battle nobody knows anything about. At those times, it will not be the words or wisdom you seek out that help you most but the thoughts you already have in your head, the ones you’ve given consideration to, that have formed cornerstones of your own ideology and principle.
So, I hope to give you a few new ones today.
These are the 9 things that I think every new graduate should know.
1. Don’t reject yourself first.
The crush we didn’t ask out because we thought they were out of our league. The semester abroad we didn’t take because we didn’t speak the language well enough. The things we didn’t even try for because we assumed the only potential outcome would be failure.
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