While thinking about how to write my last piece – to end my four years at the Daily Bruin in a way that left me feeling satisfied – I did what many modern college students would do: I procrastinated and doomscrolled.

I planned to interview a famous filmmaker, a finance titan, a successful doctor, a startup tech founder, maybe a lawyer – all Bruin alumni – and ask them to share the biggest mistakes they made after graduating and what they wish they had known about the world after leaving UCLA.

My goal was to address and help rationalize the fear I see in some of my friends’ eyes, hidden behind dry laughs and quivering smiles, whenever graduation and the uncertain job market come up.

Between LinkedIn announcements, graduate school acceptances and sub-six-figure job offers, it becomes easy to treat uncertainty like personal failure.

A piece of advice from a Bruin who “made it” might have softened the blow.

Part of me feels hypocritical writing on the topic. I have a stable future waiting for me in New York after graduation.

Then my Instagram algorithm – a mix of travel clips, UCLA memes, cooking videos and gym content – led me to Ki’i Kellerman, a UCLA alumnus-turned-aspiring actor and content creator who recently gained traction for his dad jokes and ability to cook shirtless while wearing an apron.

I realized he might be the better interview. It made me think back to the doctors and finance titans I originally wanted to speak with. Their paths followed societal markers of “success,” while Kellerman’s was entirely unexpected.

Part of the postgrad anxiety comes from attempting to walk down a path that, deep down, doesn’t match personal fulfillment.

I learned this early, when I entered UCLA as a business economics student. I hated it, and it hated me back.

At the time, the major felt like a socially safe option for finding postgrad work. But I knew, and kept telling myself, that in a perfect world I would be an English student because literature made me happy.

I eventually pivoted to English during my sophomore year after retaking Economics 11: “Microeconomic Theory” and bombing my midterm – again. After switching, I almost forced myself down the pre-law track – something I never found interesting outside of watching “Suits” – because I didn’t know how to use my new major.

But I was still interested in roles in business and worked to show that through work experience and study abroad programs alongside my nontraditional major for the profession.

My imagined perfect world became my reality, as I am pursuing a career in finance postgrad.

Kellerman, a communication graduate, is pursuing acting opportunities in Ireland, including doing commercials to pay rent. His current career as a social media creator has little to do with his UCLA degree.

His advice to graduating seniors?

“Ultimately, you’re not that important,” Kellerman said. “Everyone’s the main character of their own story, but you’re not that important.”

I fought to suppress a laugh because I knew exactly what he meant, but the bluntness threw me off guard.

UCLA has a way of making students feel like the center of American college life and postgrad success – to a fault. The Los Angeles influencer culture, sunshine and proximity to Hollywood don’t help our case.

Students often build identities around being exceptional, prestigious and impressive because those paths make social sense in a high-achieving environment.

Career ambition can quietly become a performance. Students learn how to speak the language of prestige long before they learn how to articulate what genuinely fulfills them.

I often think of the friends who told me about their perfect-world aspirations of becoming historians or zookeepers as they lined up to network with investment banking and consulting firms.

While it is a privilege to pursue your true passion – and settling for something stable because it’s safe is often logical – happiness itself shouldn’t be a privilege.

The thing is, UCLA produces enough remarkable alumni to make students believe those kinds of futures are attainable, but it’s difficult to imagine reaching that level, much less thinking through a five-year plan, when the future feels uncertain for so many students. Some people are already preparing to move back into their childhood bedrooms after graduation.

Serendipitously, Kellerman stands at the end of the postgrad five-year plan. After graduating during the COVID-19 pandemic, he took on jobs as a coach for the UCLA cheer squad and worked at a Michelin-star restaurant to support his aspirations of becoming an actor.

“I was like, ‘Well, I’ll work at this Michelin restaurant because famous people come in there,’” he said. “You have that dream of, maybe they’ll see me, and they’ll go, ‘You could be an actor.’”

But the fantasy eventually collapsed. Kellerman entered a difficult period marked by personal loss, a breakup, a stolen car and losing his job.

“It was all these things back to back to back, and I was like, ‘You know what? I’m done. I’m out. I’m running away from my problems,’” he said.

Kellerman made his first pivot, purchasing a one-way ticket to Ireland. He spent the next three years solo traveling to about 60 countries and all seven continents and working at a research base in Antarctica before settling back in Ireland to get his master’s degree in international politics at Trinity College Dublin.

Halfway through his program, Kellerman realized he didn’t feel fulfilled studying international politics – he felt the current global political landscape depressed him and would lead him to veer from his morals. He finished his dissertation while biking through France, but the experience forced him to confront a larger fear: disappointing people by pursuing an unconventional life.

He pivoted again, this time toward a life that had him sovereign to himself.

“This concept of, ‘Oh, I’m going to disappoint people if I do a certain thing, or I’m going to judge people, or people are going to judge me if I pursue what I want to do, right?’” he said. “No one cares. Do what makes you happy. So that realization of, ‘Screw it, I’m going to do that, and I’m going to try something that is fun, that brings me joy and that makes me feel fulfilled.’”

I found Kellerman to be magnetic – mostly because his story seemed like a comprehensible and grounded postgrad path.

People pivot – adapting to circumstance, failure and desire. By the end of our conversation, Kellerman seemed less to me like someone lost after graduation and more like someone who had finally become fully himself.

In many ways, Kellerman became a wiser, more secure version of the person I hope to become after leaving Westwood.