Employment

So I’m unemployed … Now what?

 

So this is it – the life of a graduate. I am officially unemployed. I have to say, as an avid reader of the Daily Mail, I have been somewhat disappointed. I thought the council would have got in touch about my free mansion by now, but alas, no such luck. Perhaps an asylum seeker took it or the EU gave it cancer. C’est la vie.

I’ve been drudging through job sites, of course, but am finding plenty ways to procrastinate along the way. One of them is Tinder. Tinder is a dating app and it’s awful. I downloaded it partly out of boredom, partly out of crushing loneliness. The app syncs to your Facebook profile and supposedly finds potential partners with similar interests. Sounds like a good idea right? It is just that. A good idea. Yesterday it asked me if I’d like to travel 47 miles to meet with someone with whom I shared just one interest: Marmite.

When not dreaming of a marriage built on yeast extract, I seem to be going through something resembling a belated adolescence. Everything and everyone makes me exceptionally angry. Bad TV. People playing music loudly on buses. George Osborne. In the most pretentious way imaginable, I feel like I am very much in the process of ‘defining myself’ and care far too much about what others think. I’ve become vegetarian and bought some new shoes. I’m even thinking about getting a haircut. In short, I have far too much time on my hands.

But in spite of my gripes, I go to bed each night hugely excited about what the next day has in store. Perhaps I’ll get a bank statement in the post. Or maybe I’ll spot an oddly shaped cloud. Whatever happens, I’m ready to embrace the moment and ride the rollercoaster of life.

Tomorrow, the job hunt continues …

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Always look on the bright side

Originally written for publication in The Boar, Warwick University’s student newspaper.—

As my three-year holiday (degree) nears an end, I find myself becoming increasingly pessimistic. My dazzling optimism has been engulfed by a cynical alter-ego who holds nothing – and I mean nothing – as possible.

It doesn’t matter how proud your parents are, when you are one of thousands of wannabe journalists, hoping to enter the ever-shrinking sector, having blacklisted half of your potential employers for political reasons, the future doesn’t look bright.

Although this may indeed be a fair assessment of my employment opportunities, it’s a position I’ve voluntarily put myself in. I’ve made my bed (out of unsold newspapers) and am now very much lying in it. What I lament is that I’ve used this self-inflicted destitution as an excuse to dismiss all the good things that have happened and are happening to me. I’ve become something of a grinch.

A few weeks ago I got stuck in the queue at Leamington’s flagship two-story nightclub, Evolve. I was waiting to put my coat away and they’d run out of hangers. “This is ridiculous!”, I cried, expressing a sense of entitlement I didn’t realize I could convey with such conviction. I then made a number of oh-so-funny quips well within the earshot of staff members who were in no way responsible for the hold up.

The next day, I woke to the news more than 200 people had died in a nightclub in Brazil. A fire had broken out – many had been trampled in the pandemonium and others had suffocated. I stopped complaining for a moment. Had my night really been all that bad? Perhaps it was time to take stock.

In a few months, I’ll be leaving a top university with a good degree. In all likeliness I won’t be receiving a call from the Guardian but I won’t be on the streets either. I’ll have a roof over my head. Healthcare. Food. Family and friends. I’ll be afforded far more than a huge proportion of the world’s population and – thanks to our morally bankrupt coalition government – a sizeable number of people in the UK.

Make no mistake, as a generation, we have reasons to harbour resentment. Many of them are justified. We’ve been born into a world in which leaders have dismissed the plight of the poor, ravaged resources and installed corrupt economic systems – bastardized capitalisms – on a global scale. But the vast majority of people reading this have shelter in which they can weather the storm. A safety net. If we want to get angry, we should first count our blessings. We should protest because so many others come up short.

It could, after all, be so much worse.

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