Congratulations to the class of 2014. It’s early yet, but reality is only a few months away. Whether you are graduating from a nationally ranked high school, working on your GED or taking college classes for Running Start – Real Life looms. Welcome.

Real Life doesn’t care if you were the valedictorian, the first chair, a class clown or (gasp!) a completely average kid. Real Life can be a vicious, snarling monster or completely indifferent. The only way to survive Real Life is to participate.

How will you participate? You will face choices such as college or work, travel or philanthropy. Perhaps you will march directly into the work force, resumé in hand, or you will enlist in a branch of the military. All choices count. It’s making that choice that’s the tough part.

Life After High School is a program series offered by King County Library System to support the choices you will have to make. From October through November you will have a variety of options of programs from across the library system.

There are events for SAT prep, getting into college and paying for your education. This series recognizes that not everyone heads off to college so there are programs for resumé and cover letter writing and interviewing. All programs are listed on the Life After High School website: http://www.kcls.org/lifeafterhighschool/.

In addition to the events in the libraries, there is a special collection of resources that includes books, websites and databases at guides.kcls.org/lahs.

Life will take you on unexpected side journeys. Majors will be changed. Relationships will ebb and flow and things that were once important are replaced by things that you never expected. Years down the road that treasured volume of Tennyson poetry that sat on the esteemed book shelf of bound classics will later perch on top of a hamster cage to deter a furry escape artist. Your children will laugh at your yearbook photos. You might get excited by the things like cooking magazines and Vitamix blenders.

All that is far into the future. Your first step is to choose a path. There are many choices in life. Know your options. It’s up to you. Just remember, there is life after high school and it’s even better.

Darcy Brixey is the teen services librarian at the Bellevue Library. She’d like to tell you she loves to read, but it’s an expectation of the job.