The Graduate’s Dilemma

As I roam the streets of London, CV flapping in my hand, I wonder: ‘was it really worth doing my degree?’

I spend most of my life nestled in my vivid imagination, lounging in a chateau in the South of France, swimming in the pool of an Italian villa, or living on a self-sufficient homestead.

Reality is sometimes quick to burst this bubble; it seems I have inadvertently chosen the windiest day of the year to conduct my job search. Every gust of warm polluted air adds a crease to my pile of CVs. Unlike another string to my bow, I don’t think this is helping my prospects. Now that I find myself competing against 16-year-olds for part-time jobs, their gracefully excusable lack of experience seems rather endearing in comparison to my disappointing array of waitressing and bar work.

As a fresh graduate, I brandish my degree like a coat of arms, in the vain hope of employment. I slowly learn to kiss goodbye to dream jobs and big breaks, and pray merely for a salary. Every day, I wake up and face a reeling list of conflicting priorities: do I trawl through numerous job sites, cold e-mail admired figures in the world of Publishing, Journalism, or Film, or try to find a part-time job in a café to tide me over? As time passes, I push the ever-prescient reality of dwindling funds to the back of my mind.

Several coping strategies ensue:

1. Remain stubbornly ignorant and pretend that everything is fine. This becomes less blissful and more frightening as time passes.

2. Reckoning/convincing myself that I am investing my time wisely now so that I can expand my earning potential later in life.

3. Romanticise — think Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, Andrea Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada, Jenna Rink in 13 Going on 30, etc.

So here I am, wading in soupy free-time, excusing myself day in and day out from the responsibilities of life, dreaming of that ever inaccessible perfect start.

It feels like, in the blink of an eye, I have transitioned from student to unemployed. I have bid goodbye to my student loan and embarked on a new escapade, in which it is me and my laptop against the world. With my tail between my legs, I now join the ranks of laptop users in cafés, who I swore never to become. All of a sudden, I miss the library. E-mails are the new DMs.

Swimming is always a trusty refuge of mine. On Monday, after a gruelling day of disheartening job-hunting, I reluctantly walked (stomped) to the Oasis Sport’s Centre, fed-up and feeling sorry for myself. I had lost track of the number of unanswered applications I had submitted, and my boyfriend dared suggest I compile a spreadsheet of applications sent and responses received. This proposition felt like a personal affront. As if I would want to see, written in black and white, the scale of dead-ends which stand before me. I moved on swiftly from this idea and, with a huff, I plunged myself into the outdoor pool. It was actually rather lovely. I stuck firmly in the slow lane, where the sunlight warmed a slither of the pool, and cast a dappled rippling glow across my limbs as they cruised through the water. I only managed to swim for fifteen minutes, as I became increasingly hungry, but I felt undeniably better for moving my body.

Usually, I feel as though I am fighting an uphill battle. Other days, however, the job hunt is wonderfully fulfilling, and none of it seems so bad. Today’s expedition has brought me to Petersham, a sweet village nestled in South West London. This setting feels like a fitting bridge between my rural upbringing and my prospective London-based career. At 10am, I arrived at Petersham Nurseries, where a stylist - come - fashion editor - come - business owner had generously offered to take me under her wing for a few hours, to coach me with jewels of advice. Walking along the track towards the café, I passed fields of long summer grasses and grazing horses. The sun shone across the dainty stone-walled lanes, and I was hard-pressed to believe that I had been in central London less than an hour ago. My imagination creaked its way out of hibernation, beginning to craft fantasies of moving here myself. We sat in the courtyard, tucked beneath an awning of blossoming foliage, amongst which I thought I spotted some runner beans. The dappled shade gave way to flowing conversation and a sense of broadening horizons.

Now, as I walk along the Thames path towards Richmond, I am flanked by moored boats, their underbellies shimmering with the rippling glow of sunlight reflected from the water. I dip beneath overhanging trees, bolstered by several cups of tea, and reinvigorated by a fruitful conversation. I feel blissfully far removed from stresses of rent payments and tube fares.

Yet, the crushing truth remains…

Total spent:

£3 - Coffee bought outside Senate House Library to fuel me through a disheartening day of advertising myself as painfully available to work

£5 - Printing credit to print copies of my CV

£9.99 - Paperback copy of Annie Ernaux’s The Years, inspired by friends’ incredible reviews of the theatre adaptation, and also bought as a decoy to give the Waterstones’ bookseller my CV (as it happens, they only accept online applications)

£3.50 - Diet Coke in Foyles’ café, minutes after finding out that they have no job vacancies

£7.80 - Ham & Cheese Toastie and Diet Coke in Pret, Richmond

Total earned:

£0