The Doom-Like Reality of a Recent Graduate Student
You've graduated! You didn't think you could do it. You stare at the (fake) certificate with the little ribbon on that's clutched in your hand. You're head to toe in graduation robes and have just taken a million pictures with your family that will haunt your living room, and your grandparents', for approximately the next 20 years. Better get one on your good side. You shake the sweaty hand of the university dean and wonder if your legs will make it down that aisle without buckling. But you've graduated! You feel a sense of deep pride and ambition. Surely now you will land the job of your dreams. You'll become a CEO of some grand company. You'll start a new life in a big city just like you're in 'Emily In Paris' and always be dressed immaculately.
A few months go by, and then maybe a year, and this magical job you had on your manifestation board (is this a thing now?) has not materialised. The job hunt is getting nowhere, but do not despair. Us graduates will land on our over-educated feet eventually. But in the meantime, here's a list of some of the realities you'll be faced with in your new job seeking world.
The Student In An Egg Conundrum
Arguably the most ironic of responses to that job application you've spent hours applying for. You can't wait to put your education to good use and you apply for that job to build up your experience and add some sparkle to your CV. Until you get that wonderful response that you 'don't have enough'. However, in order to get more experience, you still need experience. It's a never-ending cycle of frustration, loathing at the World, and many curse words directed at the faceless personnel of the recruitment department. Are they expecting us to have built our own career empire while at university, with countless drone humanoids doing our bidding? Do they expect recent graduates to come with 15+ years' experience in said field? Unless you happen to be suffering from a Benjamin Button-like ailment, I assume you are in the same, slowly sinking boat that the rest of us graduates are going down with. Hop in!
The Non-Temporary 'Temp' Job
It's been a few weeks and your pockets are wearing a little thin. Your days of no-uni and no-work freedom draws to a close as you face the grim reality of adult finances, or lack thereof. You decide to get a Temp job, maybe in an office, or a warehouse, or anything else you don't really care about. It's only temporary, right? But the temp job seems never ending. Tapping away and data inputting like the corporate bitch you are, pretending to look somewhat present in any Teams meetings you may have (are you fooling anyone?).
You apply for jobs every day but still the temp job attaches itself to your life, like a leisure centre-special verruca. You're there so long you begrudgingly get offered a permanent contract, and you can't call it temporary then (we still will). It's okay, you'll get that grad job. You haven't had the right of passage of a god-awful temp job to really appreciate the wonderful role you'll eventually get. Hang in there! However, if you do want to find out How To Get Away With Hardly Working At Work, check out my article below, it might just help!
The Mash Potato Brain
There will come a time when you start to miss even the most boring of lectures you once had. The one that, on paper, you should've enjoyed, but wound-up scrolling through your socials on your phone. Now, without any intellectual stimulus, you feel your brain turning into a clotted cheese, mash potato-like ball of useless knowledge. You find yourself at 3 in the morning Googling what happened to all the actors from 90210, where are they now, and what were their names again? Vital information I'm sure, but it's a bit different from the challenging essays you used to write, even if you hated writing them at the time. Sometimes you drift back to the last time you applied your brain to something, and this inevitably leads to the business ventures.
The Undiscovered Business Mogul
The boredom starts to eat away at you, you've gone down a Dragon's Den rabbit hole on YouTube, you imagine yourself sitting in a boardroom with Sir Alan Sugar. The age of new business ventures is upon you. You turn your hand at every idea under the sun. Maybe you've started baking cakes like a mad man, determined to sell one to the nearest family member with an upcoming event. You try your hand at buying and reselling random Pokémon index cards as an 'investment', and then quizzically assess them two weeks later and wonder what on earth you were thinking. Perhaps you went down the failed lash-tech route like I did, and temporarily blind one of your willing yet naïve friends (sorry again Louisa).
You try anything to stave off the boredom. But hey, one of those ideas might just work. Let's not be negative, you may find your calling and sack of the grad job idea altogether! God knows it'll be easier.
Student Discount Withdrawals
(Yes, that’s me, smiling in the face of my doom).
Student discounts are arguably one of the sole reasons to attend university. I know it's £9k a year for the whole degree part, but you now get 20% off of Pretty Little Thing. That makes it worth it, right? You get so used to discounted prices you treat everyone to drinks at the Student local, you have clothes that were a steal, and the phrase 'I'm a student' brought you so much purchasing power. However, now you have left the warm embrace of UNIDAYS, you are left adrift in an icy tundra of full retail price. No longer are you relying on that code that would get you a free delivery, and no longer are you relying on student finance either. You are plunged into a world of despair and horror. Welcome to the adult financial world.
Yes Master(s)
At some point, you're so tired of this endless battle with recruitment departments that your gaze starts to stray. Like a fuckboy on Love Island, your gaze gets bored of those graduate jobs saved to your desktop, and tends to wander into the sweet temptation of further education. You hate yourself for even considering it, but the gravitational pull of more student debt seems to have you in an otherworldly grasp that you just don't want to resist. Everyone's doing it, all your course mates seem to already have enrolled and given into the educational Stockholm Syndrome. You imagine yourself as a postgrad, and you start to seek the comforting familiarity of student accommodation and a student loan.
You know you'll have to repeat the cycle of the post-grad job search in a year. But who cares, let's just do another year. Why the hell not?
The Parent Trap
It's been three years of fun, laughs and relaxation in your shared student house. Maybe you've lived with your best pals and you've been on the lash every night. None of you care very much if there's some plates unwashed. You're free as a bird, and accustomed to a Friends-style life of ease. But after your graduation the inevitable happens. You have to move back in with your parents. You haven't secured a job yet, so you can't whisk away to your new apartment and start that wonderful adult dream life. You're back in the family home. You're back to the constant nagging and invasion of privacy, endless mix ups in the fridge, and annoying siblings poking their head through your door asking for things. And say goodbye to any steamy hook ups you might want to bring back to your not so marital bed.
On the other hand, it could be a blessed relief. We've all had that one housemate who demands in the group chat which one of those awful housemates moved their tea towel to a slightly different position it was in before. Or the guy who smokes weed and stinks out the whole house when you're trying to tuck into a Pot Noodle.
All of these points aside, we will all get there in the end. After all, the post graduate employment rate is said to be 87.4%! Whether it's a grad job we've always dreamed of, our own business to rival that of Elon Musk, or just a job you fell into and end up loving. But for those challenging transitional moments away from uni life into the real world which are a bit of a struggle, I hope this eased your pain slightly. Go get em, you educated thing!
