Requisite Metamorphoses

Abstract Emerging adults who are at the intersection of college and work face a complex and challenging transition. In addition to finding employment, graduates seek to define and explore long-term career paths, form personal and professional identities, develop new support systems, and learn the mores and culture of the new environment of work. They approach these challenges while also moving through emerging adulthood, a development phase that precedes the feeling of being fully adult. In short, a successful college-to-work transition requires graduates to move through a series of metamorphoses. This chapter explores these metamorphoses and the experiences of graduates who are experiencing them. It also suggests ways colleges and universities can support the needs of their students and graduates and things emerging adults can do themselves to foster their successful metamorphoses.