The part of Rygel’s story that stayed with me wasn’t the 600 job applications. It was how reasonable all of his decisions were.
He finished undergrad early. He got internships. When the job market looked uncertain, he stayed in school and did a master’s. If you were advising a student in 2024 or 2025, you might suggest the same thing.
On paper, nothing looks reckless. Nothing looks careless.
And yet he described feeling drained in the program. The assignments were getting done. The degree was moving forward. But it didn’t feel like it was leading anywhere.
That’s confusing, especially when you’ve spent your whole life chasing clear milestones.
For most of us, progress has always been visible. You pass the class. You move up a year. You graduate. You get the offer. You can point to the result and say, “That counts.”
There’s a clear link between effort and outcome.
After school, that link weakens.
You can apply to hundreds of jobs and hear nothing back. You can earn another credential and still not feel closer to a role you actually want. You can be busy every day and still wonder what any of it is adding up to.
When that happens, it’s easy to assume you made a mistake somewhere. You revisit old decisions. You question the major. You question the master’s. You question yourself.
But sometimes the issue isn’t the decision.
Sometimes the issue is the measurement.
School gives you a scoreboard. Adult life doesn’t. No one tells you what the next checkpoint is. No one guarantees that if you put in X effort, you’ll get Y result in a clean, predictable way.
The system that used to give you quick feedback stops working.
Rygel started noticing that the only things that felt solid were the ones he chose for himself. Mentoring undergrads. Working on creative projects. Finishing something small that he owned from start to finish. Those didn’t come with titles or formal recognition, but he could see the output and the impact directly.
That’s a different way of measuring progress.
If you’re in a season where you’re checking the boxes and it still feels empty, it doesn’t automatically mean you chose wrong. It might mean you’re still using a scoreboard that only made sense when someone else was setting the goals.
The shift is simple, but not easy.
Instead of asking, “Did I hit the milestone?” you start asking, “Is this actually moving me toward the kind of work and life I want?”
That question takes more ownership. It also gives you more control.
And that’s the upside.
When you stop relying only on external milestones, you’re not at the mercy of grades, titles, or hiring cycles to tell you whether you’re making progress. You get to define it more clearly for yourself.
That’s harder at first.
But it’s also more durable.
If you ever read stuff like this and think, “ok… but what am I actually supposed to do with this?”
That’s what GradSimple Insiders is for. It’s where I share how I’m thinking about career decisions behind the scenes so people don’t end up reacting to the wrong signal or locking themselves into a move they regret.
