There are few things in this world more real than the post-grad struggle. Unemployment is already an incredibly difficult thing to live through, but crawling the streets to find a job after you’ve fought your way through the academic boot camp that is university is damn near degrading. With every brutal rejection paired with a strategic binge of Netflix and junk food grows the sense of under-appreciation and instability. Nights once spent staying up until dawn with some of your favorite people in the world drinking wine on rooftops is all too soon replaced with restless sleep, staring at your virtually worthless degree and begging someone — dear God, please, anyone — to hire you.

In order to calm their minds and stay positive, some people find exercising or retail therapy to be a solid stress reliever. As post-grads with literally negative funds to our name, online shopping or purchasing a gym membership is simply out of the question most of the time. If you find yourself saying, “I barely have change for the parking meter,” then you’re in luck — a strong Wi-Fi connection is all you need because streaming music can be free. And listening to music is one of the best ways to blow off steam when the post-grad struggle gets to be too much.

I find that mixing a little bit of old with the new is a beautiful way to gracefully enter the next stage of your life. If you’re looking for a way to quell those grown-up nightmares, check out these bangers and jazzy classics that have helped me crawl out of my own post-grad slump.

grown-up

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