Musings over a Graduate Application

LIVING IT UP IN LIMBO

Warning: 
If you suffer from Graduatewithnojobitis you should know that this post does have the ability to improve your mood. But if you stop in the middle you could end up suffering from the following conditions: moodiness, sense of impending doom, anxiety, nausea, anger, grief, inexplicable terror, nightmares, insomnia and uncontrollable weeping. 

If you do experience any of these symptoms scroll straight to 

the bottom of the page for a video of funny cats. 

*

Yet another application is in, another deadline met. Tomorrow I will finish the next one. And at some point I will write something poignant for my Master's degree, pen an article for the university newspaper and then embroil myself in the editing needed for a client's novel. I've quickly realised that whilst being a postgraduate is fantastic, in eight months time I'll be out on my own, dipping my toe into Real Life. 

This is slightly terrifying. 

Especially when Real Life doesn't seem to want to give me, or a load of my equally qualified friends, a job. Not because finding a job is hard - it's ridiculously easy to find a job using Milkround or Guardian Jobs or the newspaper or just a cursory internet search using key terms like 'Graduate Publishing' or 'PR Entry Level' or 'Marketing 2014'. Earning that job, that much desired position, that omg-it-actually-pays-a-salary role: that is the tricky part. 

So far I've only met with the Apologetic Email of Doom and the Utter Silence of Rejection. 

And yeah rejection kind of hurts. Maybe only a little the first time. Better luck next time right? The third, fifth and tenth time it niggles a little, stings a tad. Then by the twelfth or the thirtieth, it's hard to keep yourself from wondering "what’s wrong with me?!". It's incomprehensible. Because you’re great. Really you are. You deserved that administrative assistant role with a retail company you’ve never heard of because you’re actually a wonderful human being and there’s no explanation as to why you’re not having any luck attaining that precious J. O. B. Thus, by the time you’re on the umpteenth rejection email, you’re probably reassessing priorities. Maybe thinking... well... Costa will tide me over until someone hires me. Only COSTA rejects you as well. Because when 1,700 people apply for 8 jobs at a Costa, suddenly it’s not so simple.

In fact, it’s kind of grim. There’s thousands of us desperately scrabbling away at the job market, studying our carefully reworded cover letters and our personalised CVs, wondering what we’re not doing that Jennifer with the purple handbag from that philosophy class in first year did better than us.

So what do we do? How do we change this? Is it even in our power to change things or are we stuck in the rut of our economic climate? Should we be blaming the reputations of young people as bad timekeepers and over-dreamers, expecting to waltz into their ideal job at 22? Should we be eyeing up our international counterparts and believing they’re stealing our jobs? Or should we be readying our boots to kick out the 'old people' who are living longer, working longer and therefore holding onto jobs for longer? A fair few are happy to simply point out ‘At Least It’s Not 2009’. Yes, therein lies our silver-lining, fellow graduates, it’s not the beginning of the worst fiscal crash in decades. 

I can see your frowns: surely there HAS to be something better than that? ....

A New Yorker Cartoon by Mike Twohy

YES THERE IS GOOD NEWS.

Firstly, the economy has improved and with any luck it'll keep improving. Plus, all those traditional jobs that were cut down during the fiscal crash - they're not the only options anymore. There are loads of start ups, groups of young people with big dreams who are keen to see the world working slightly differently. Things aren't as bad as some of the stories suggest. And whether it takes six days, six weeks or six months - statistics say that IT WILL HAPPEN. Don't give up. 

Which leads me to Point the Second: our age is digital. We can do LOADS using our shiny computers and fizzbubbling interwebz. Not only can you make your CV look awesome and google great cover letters. You also can literally stalk companies using online media too, because if Little Miss Brilliant or Mr Great-Is-My-Middle-Name from That Awesome Company leaves to start in Another Pretty Fantastic Role then there's a new vacancy. People might move up and create a vacuum for little intrepid graduates to slope their way into. And then there's things like Linkedin. Sure we've all heard it before - USE YOUR CONTACTS, SAYS EVERYBODY ALL THE TIME - but now you can really track what everyone you went to university with is doing. So if your friend has a job at a place you think sounds interesting, you can ask them about it. You can find out what they did and what they think of it now. Even if they can't give you a knee in, they might be able to give you some tips. 

Thirdly: you are not alone. We're all in the same boat. We're young, soon-to-be-unemployed-non-students and whilst the boat might look like it's chockablock and about to sink, it's completely natural to be in this position. Some will be thinking OOOOOOO SO MUCH LOOKS AMAZING I JUST CAN'T CHOOSE. And others will be frowning at the Jobs List just praying that one day something comes up that they Actually Find Interesting. The point is that after some self-analysis and brutal honesty, we will figure out what to apply for, who to apply to and whether we actually want it or if we're driven by desperation. We will make it. Eventually. One person at a time until our younger siblings have caught up with us. And then we'll go try Australia. 

So basically, there are things to look forward to and whilst we're all panicky because we're freaking out (secretly, on the inside, all the time) we do have the option to take a little bit of time and figure ourselves out as well as our jobs. We don't have to be fully-fledged-fifty-somethings until we are fifty-somethings. And even then I doubt we'll worry too much about actually being fifty-somethings. We have the time to misspend a little bit of this limbo period working things out. It will suck at times. It will hurt at times. It will probably be the most depressing thing you've ever experienced ever sometimes. But the silver-lining is that there's always the chance that next time you'll receive the email that says YES. WE WANT YOU. YOU'RE HIRED. Because we'll plod on together, hoping and dreaming and wishing that that email already arrived, and we'll make sure the boat doesn't sink by watching videos of funny cats. Like this one. They bring out videos every month. BOOM. 

MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN YOUR FAVOUR. AND MINE.

Je serai poète et toi poésie,

SCRIBBLER

Body Electric

I woke up today with one of those headaches that makes your whole world wobble every time you move, and even the dull sounds of distant planes and the tapping of keys seem painful. I’d had the weirdest dreams thanks to my mother’s lasagne last night. In it I was sitting outside on a warm grey day in London, perched on a dark wooden bench, no dedication, looking out across the Thames. In the corner of my vision was the London Eye and in the other the painted bow of HMS President (1918). She’s a naval vessel turned restaurant. Talk about recycling. The Thames is beautiful. Its grey-green wrinkles are speckled as the sun peaks out for a moment and the Eye glows in the distant bend, the Westminster flags flying as silhouettes. I think in the dream I was wondering about the riots and if they’d reach me but there wasn’t any sign of them.

It’s odd really. Two nights ago we were all sprawled out in the sitting room, my Twisted Sister, my brother and I, after eating far too much roast dinner. We were contentedly watching Top Gear when my brother’s computer tells him that he’s being called on Skype. So he wanders out and despite the good humour in the air, as James May wins the challenge for the mere reason that his tin car was £2010 under budget (despite losing all the mini-competitions).

“Are you ok?” I hear him asking, “When did it happen? Are the police there?”

Arman, a boy that I’ve known since he was thirteen, who sang bass in the school choir and has more charisma in his little finger than half the people I know, is calling my brother from the wreckage of his family’s shop in Enfield. Terrifyingly, my brother himself was there the night before, out partying without a care in the world. The shop, a family owned and run watch shop has been looted, the windows emptied of the painstakingly toiled over watches and items of jewellery.

I can’t quite believe the extent to which these rampaging hooligans are going. It’s almost terrifying but because it seems very far off from here, most of our conversations are rather self-righteous and philosophical.

I started an article when we were away in France, comparing how the police in London treated me when I was burgled to how they treated my best friend Alex in Paris. The police in London didn’t come for eight hours, simply told us to sit tight and not touch anything. The police in Paris, on the other hand, laughed at my friend Alex and said it was her own fault for being a girl, took her watch from her wrist because it was ‘evidence’ and then told her to stop wasting police time all the while leering at her.

“Every day,” she said, “there’s a new story in the papers about how someone has been injured or killed by the gendarme in random acts of brutality.”

They’re corrupt.

“There’s no point in telling them about the fact that you’ve been mugged or sexually assaulted because they’ll blame you.” She continued quite candidly, after telling us about a man who followed her up to her room one night and attacked her but who she luckily managed to fight off.

I think we should put into perspective just how ‘bad’ the Metropolitan police are – we’re actually very lucky in the UK to have a Police Force that tries to do their job. Maybe if they had a little more power (eg. to actually attack a man whose drawn a gun, real or not because how can they tell from a distance) then they’d be able to do their job properly. A hooligan who’s struck down by the riot police should NOT be able to appeal for compensation because of police brutality; I almost feel the police should be able to sue them for wasting police time. The limitations we’ve put on our police make little sense when it means they are rendered almost useless in the face of criminal activity like we’ve seen the last few days. Of course we don’t want to see a return to the 80s but a mob cannot be stopped without reciprocal force.