Working Like A Student – But Not A Student!
One of the dubious pleasures of leaving university for the last time is that you are supposed to enter the big bad wonderful world of work. You know the routine, get your degree, get a good job, meet the girl of your dreams, marry, have children, stop having sex, divorce and die. Well perhaps that is over cynical but you get the general idea. The getting of a good job entry always tended to be at the top of the list and one of the more generally welcome items on it, but now as we all know getting that good job has become much more problematic because in the current economic climate there simply aren’t as many good jobs out there.
Long before the introduction of full course fees, most of us, unless we were born with the proverbial silver spoon in our mouths and or were members of the Bullingdon club, had got used to the fact that we had to, as the Americans like to put it, ’work our way through college’. In reality this meant doing what ever work we could find in the holidays and working in bars or shops in the evenings and at weekends during term time. Essentially the experience although it be fun at times, was very bitty. We had to put together what bits of work and income we could scratch together in our free time and that was ok, we were after all at uni. I don’t think though that any of us even in 2007 when the world went into meltdown expected we would have be doing the same thing once we’d graduated, but increasingly that is exactly what many of us are doing.
I left University last summer in 2011 with a good degree but since then I have been unable to find the right job. Now I’ll be honest about this, the key phrase in that last sentence is ’the right job’, I have had the opportunity of taking jobs that weren’t the ’right job’, but my rational has been that now, when I have no ties or responsibilities, is the time to hold out for the the type of job I really do want and believe I can do. Perhaps that’s wrong thinking, certainly many people have told me so, but my attitude has been, if not now then when. In any case that’s how it’s been over the last year or so and I find myself still in my old student mode, doing various bits and pieces to keep body and soul together.
I’ve done promo work, both in and out of a banana costume, a spot of theatre administration, market research for IPSOS-MORI, worked for Oddbins, been a bike courier, driven for Car Service Surrey and done a lot of other temping. Some of this has actually been quite interesting and I have toyed with the idea of trying to become a writer. My main point though, is that I think this way of life is going to become the norm for a lot of new graduates and we’d all better get used to it. Perhaps as my friend James keeps telling me the smart thing to do would be to start my own business.
Comments are closed!