This Is The End, Beautiful Friend

I have a job!!!! Ha ha, never did I think I would utter those sweet, sweet words of glory. I am now a Production Assistant at the very prestigious Bloomsbury Publishing in their Academic Department. If you don't know Bloomsbury, you should - they were the clever people who published Harry Potter. I will however, be working less with Muggles, Witches and Wizards and more with revolutions, wars and philosophies. This is certainly the end of monotonous job searches and cover letters and CVs and bitter bitter rejection. Hooray! It has taken me around 8 months of searching, over 40 jobs applied to, less than half of those replied to, over 100 tiring waitressing shifts, 5 nerve-racking interviews and 4 work experience placements with great companies.

Reactions to my news varied from people streaming tears down their face and jumping up and down on the spot for about five minutes to a simple 'wow that's great....but what about the blog?' Aah the selfish human mind - always looking to get something for itself out of a situation. I am, of course, joking and never fret, this is not the end of our beautiful relationship dear readers (even if some of you were dying to get rid of me!).

I did contemplate ending it all here, signing off in a dramatic statement of typed words flooding the internet with their poignancy. After all, I can't write anything bad about the new job (not that I think I'll need to) for fear of being fired before I've even taken off, and let's face it... who really wants to read about how well someone is doing and how happy they are? People want to to see how miserable and stressed everyone else is so that they don't feel like a total failure themselves. I know I do. It seems however, that there is still a lot to be written about the graduate experience and the terrible job market we are in at the moment.

I don't claim to be a bearer of all knowledge on the subject but I do think that if I can offer up some advice or just a little bit of courage to anyone about to graduate or looking for a job, then this blog still has a semblance of a life. I still feel angry about the way many of my job applications were handled. I still believe that universities don't offer up enough practical advice about entering into a weak labour market. And I still believe that we need to shift the blame from jobless graduates who are labelled lazy or stuck-up and take a deeper look at what is really holding them back.

In September of 2011, I was one of thousands of graduates unable to find a job that used the skills I gained at university. With the 2012 graduates about the join us, it looks set to get even more difficult. Here's my message of hope however - If I can do it so can you. And until that point, we shall both keep fighting the objects that stand in the way. I'm on your side - job or no job.  

  

The Luck of the Draw

I don't know whether I was green with envy or just plain sick but the number of high end designer coats I handled yesterday was insane. It was Dolce & Gabanna after Prada after Burberry, and so much fur; god knows how many dead animals I hung on a coat hanger. What did I expect when I was the coat check girl for a very very expensive jewellery shop on New Bond Street? When I say expensive, I mean some of those jewels would have bought several houses.

While a few of the clientèle were almost ridiculous - botoxed faces that looked like masks and 40 year old bodies pushed into see-through black dresses - the owner of the shop was actually quite normal. Once they had discovered I was more than just a waitress (actually we are all always, more than just waitresses) they told me about how their son had just graduated from Manchester (ha...Nottingham is better!) and was going to be in the same situation as me soon.

Well, this got me thinking... is he actually going to have to face the same obstacles as me? His parents own a spectacular diamond shop and they know countless extremely wealthy and connected people. A reader of this humble little blog recently stressed to me how much luck comes into the equation. They wrote

'Even the work ethic required to complete a law or medical degree is established by a certain amount of luck. Lucky to have nurturing parents, lucky to have wealth (for most), lucky to have the correct set of genes to use a certain side of the brain, lucky to be taught from an early age how to manage time. With 7 billion people on earth, there's more pressure than ever to be perfect' 


Well it seems that my luck has dried up, or at least it's in drought. I was lucky enough to have parents who gave me decent enough genes to do well at my education, pushed me to take on lots of extra curricular activities and who taught me how to communicate well. Certainly there are people born into far unluckier circumstances than myself.

I'm not the kind of person however, who wishes to leave it all up to luck. While several factors are playing in my favour in the 'rat race' I also believe that most of my good fortune has come about through sheer hard work. The luckiest person in the world wouldn't get the job of their dreams without at least trying.

Well here's a test for you life... I recently had a very exciting interview at Bloomsbury publishing for my ideal role in their academic division. It went really well - the interviewer seemed to like me, I answered the questions naturally and comprehensively. I left feeling good about it but I was only the second interviewee and they had several other candidates to see after me. I'll know if I got the job by tomorrow.  Come on luck, open the flood barriers again and pour your glorious water all over me because this drought is starting to slowly suck the life out of me.

Reunion (Or Forgetting You Ever Left University)

My weekend pretending I was once again a student of Nottingham University was, to be oxymoronic, painfully fun. I arrived healthy, fit and ready for two days of student messiness. ("It's gonna be Lionel", as the guys say....took me rather a while to get this pun. What can I say, I just don't know enough about football). I left, however, with no voice, a broken shoe and a foot that was described rather too vividly as resembling a gammon joint. Student nightclub Ocean proved to be a little too much for this out-of-practice grad me thinks. Despite the fact I have black pumps without a sole on the right foot, am on antibiotics and sound rather like Leonard Cohen on an extra raspy day, I can say that it was actually, a spectacular weekend.
Living in the real world has been proving a bit too much for me and few of my graduated mates. The endless job applications, down hearteningly low wages and general lack of brain stimulation have left us pining for the student lifestyle once again.

Of course, when I was close to graduating I thought I had the whole world ahead of me. I couldn't wait to be earning and contributing, working and feeling grown up. The transition from uni lifestyle to real world routine can be difficult, especially if you don't feel much worth in your situation. Universities, especially personal tutors, need to prepare students more for this unexpected change. There are no cheap sports clubs or competitions any more and no regular social events with all your peers - it's very difficult to get everyone together at the same time and place these days. Alongside getting us prepared for finals, tutors need to be pushing us to start applying for jobs, work experience, grad schemes, anything that will help set us up for the after-life. I know these are the kind of things I'll be telling all my younger relatives to do.

Life seemed so much simpler when we could live in our pyjamas and eat pizza in the library at 2am. Nevertheless, the show that is our lives must, and will, go on. Despite reminding me of what I am missing, this weekend also showed me that we are all, mostly, in the same position and no matter what is happening in life, we will always have an amazing group of friends to share our woes with over rum and orange juice -or whatever other strange student drink we choose. Cheers!