options – Beth Thomas

You Can’t Do It All

Recently, over a weekend brunch with my mum (I’m a middle-class blonde girl with an Instagram account, what do you expect?), we got onto the subject of what I was doing This Time Last Year, a conversation we seem to have every three months.

I remember September 2016 very vaguely. My mum remembered that I was dreading going back to Warwick for a number of reasons, and I can definitely recall the knot I had in my stomach when I unlocked the door of our student house on my first day back. On the other hand, I remember being filled with determination that I was going to do everything I’d wanted to at university that year.

Over the summer I’d read Marina Keegan’s ‘The Opposite of Loneliness’ and was half impressed, half intimidated by everything she’d achieved. She wrote and acted in plays, attended writing classes, was the president of the Yale College Democrats, knew how to sail, dedicated three hours a day to writing, got a job at The New Yorker, had a boyfriend. What struck me the most about this was that she had something to leave behind when she tragically died a few days after graduating.

This sent me into a panic. I’d thought about what I’d done so far at university: ‘Well, I’ve sub-edited and written articles for the university paper…I wrote some pretty good essays and…and…’ That was it really.

Before coming to Warwick, I had a very idealised picture of what my university career would be like. I’d passionately hated my secondary school experience and would do anything to avoid going to school. Sick of being ‘the quiet one’ from Years 7-13, 15-year-old me had firmly set her sights on studying English at university. The utopia-like vision I had of university life got me through the last three years of school, and, without it, I definitely wouldn’t have done as well as I had. The idea of university was special to me because it was meant to be a place where I could be the person I wasn’t allowed to be in my hometown, somewhere I never really felt ’at home’ in the end.

So, when I lugged my suitcase into my tiny Rootes room in 2014, it’s safe to say I had pretty big expectations. I was, of course, going to graduate with a First (something I somehow achieved, though I’m still not sure how). I was going to love every single book I read, and edit the student paper, and act in all the student productions, and go to the Fringe, and get back into dance, and have the best social life, and write award-winning novels in my spare time. I managed to do about one of these things fully and a few of the other things a little bit. But, let’s face it, I was never going to love Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, no matter how hard I tried.

The truth is, you can’t do everything. I was lucky enough to become an Editor on my student paper, and helped to direct a student production in my third year, but I barely had time to sleep and eat, let alone do any of the other things. We can’t all be Marina Keegan, and that’s fine. I spent a while after graduating kicking myself for not having done more at university. But there aren’t enough hours in the day.

I’m proud of everything I achieved at university, even if I didn’t get the experience I expected. So, when my mum asked if I’d enjoyed myself, I said yes, but I wish I had another three years.

Learning to Fail

After checking my bank balance online, I decided it was time to take a rain check on purchasing the £40 Dress of Dreams™ I’d been fawning over for the past week.

After a month of returning home from university and turning down a job offer in China, I was slowly coming to terms with the fact that I had no current income. Six months ago, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid about handing over forty of my finest English pounds to Zara – but six months ago, the lovely people of Student Finance Wales were there to help. The Dress of Dreams™ would have to wait.

This year, I’ve decided to take a gap year to earn some money before doing a masters. I was accepted to the first position I applied to, but ended up turning it down – my parents found the change of their only child being 160 miles away to 5000 miles across the world a little difficult. This decision all seemed well and good: I’d been able to get a 1:1, nab some freelancing opportunities, and spend some much needed time with friends and family instead of faffing around with documentation and language apps. “I’ll just get another job”, I thought. Oh how naive I was.

People weren’t lying when they said the job opportunities were all in the big cities. I’ve been scouring job sites on the daily in a desperate attempt to find a job that actually pays. For all the criticisms launched at millenials, nobody can fault us for the amount of unpaid work we do. Unfortunately, my hometown has never seemed smaller, and the only jobs available are in recruitment or serving at the new restaurants that have recently opened.

I’d tried to apply for jobs in marketing, grad schemes, or at my local university to no avail. After another post-interview rejection for a position that would have given me the opportunity to live in Italy for a year, I felt completely knocked, resulting in a public cry in the middle of Tesco. “I’m failing at everything“, I whined down the phone to my parents. If you think I was being dramatic and entitled, you would be correct. This was only the third position I’d applied to. Ever. But hear me out.

A few months ago, I wrote an article for my student paper about the unhealthily competitive atmosphere at my university, and the response it garnered felt like double-edged sword. I was overwhelmed by how many people related to the article, sharing it on their own social media accounts in agreement that the competition at Warwick had gone too far. Part of me felt glad that I’d said what a lot of people were thinking. On the other hand, if so many people felt as down about the competitive nature of university as I did, then something must be very wrong.

With the pressure to do well in all areas of life (not exactly helped by the brag-fest that is social media), it’s no wonder young people feel like failures when they face rejection. Whereas getting a good degree may have been the main pressure for students before, the need to find the perfect grad job/work experience/internship seems to have taken precedence.

Before the job rejections, I’d felt genuinely happy about my 1:1. It was a goal I’d set myself from the outset and one that I’d gone above and beyond to achieve. But that happiness and pride seemed to disappear in a flash once I returned home. My friends had somehow landed flashy grad jobs, and well-meaning but nosy distant relatives constantly interrogated me with the question all unemployed graduates dread: “Have you got a job yet?” It’s a question I’m asked nearly every day and every time I answer “No”, I can’t help feeling that, at the ripe old age of 21, I’ve failed at life.

The next few months are probably going to be the hardest thing I’ve done. Maybe even harder than GCSE maths. And it’s all because, not to brag here, but I’ve never really failed before. While scrolling through Twitter on a clearly productive streak (…) I stumbled across a tweet that made me genuinely laugh out loud and give myself a reality check:

It made me realise how stupid I was being. Like most ‘snowflake’, millennial graduates, I’d been told I was clever and capable my entire life. I got the highest grades, was put into the Oxbridge group in Sixth Form, and accepted into my dream university. Of course, this only happened with a ridiculous amount of hard work and hours pouring over textbooks, but it convinced me that if I worked hard, I could get exactly what I wanted. This, I quickly realised, is not the case, hence my Tesco breakdown.

So I’ve decided to use this year as a time to learn something new – cue swelling, inspirational music. Namely, how to fail. I’m sure plenty more rejections are coming my way, but that doesn’t mean my future is void of opportunities. I may not have skipped straight into a grad job, but I’ve managed to gain things I never thought I would. I’m starting a new (temporary) position at Mind, something I’ve wanted to do for ages. I’m about to get paid for my first published article and have just sent off another. In a few months, I’ll be spending a fortnight at The Times.

I may not be raking in the cash just yet, and the Dress of Dreams™ might have to wait for now, but it doesn’t mean I have nothing to look forward to. It certainly doesn’t warrant a public breakdown in a supermarket. What I’ve quickly come to realise, is that failing is ok. You don’t have to hide it, or construct elaborate lies to disguise it. Those who you really want in your life will support you, instead of gloating over your unemployment. And as for the other people? Screw them.

The Pointlessness of University Careers Fairs

With the second year of my degree comes the pressure to start making decisions about my future career. After a matter of days of being back on campus, I was inundated with emails inviting me to the various careers fairs organised very helpfully by the University on behalf of their promising students. My friend has written her own response for our student newspaper, which you can check out here.

I never really knew (and still don’t) what I wanted to be when I grew up. There were so many options: author, actress, police woman, editor, neurologist, detective, journalist, marine biologist – these being just some of the many careers I’ve daydreamed about throughout my life. And so when it came to choosing my degree, I went with what I was best at and enjoyed the most – English. An arts degree, I thought, would give me a wide range of careers options for the future, despite the wincing looks and comments of “Not very practical, is it?” I got – and still get – from people when I told them what I would be studying.

However, from what my friends and I found at the careers fairs, I seem to have been sadly wrong about this. I decided to really get my act together this year and to start thinking seriously about my options for the future, rather than daydreaming about accepting my Oscar or becoming a world-renowned, risk-taking journalist. So my friends and I made the journey from our student house onto campus, where we were ushered into a conference room filled with an array of stalls representing different companies and organisations, like a really dull fairground for ambitious people.

But after circling the room, we soon found that the only stalls directed
at English students were companies offering teaching experience or law, echoing that one question that haunts those studying my degree: “So, you want to become a teacher?”

The dichotomy between arts/humanities students and science students is apparent at most universities, often coming in the form of teasing that those studying for a BSc are doing the “real” degree. Whilst this is mostly lighthearted (apart from when arguments about buying books ensue), it was discouraging to see that this attitude has leaked into the more serious world of careers, and though there was plenty on offer for those interested in law firms, banking or teaching, the whole fair seemed pointless for anyone studying for an arts degree, so much so that my friend wrote an article about it in our student paper.

My university is currently in the top ten for English Literature in the UK, so it seems odd that the careers fair didn’t reflect the various and diverse careers available in the subject after graduating. I know my degree isn’t as “practical” as those which point to a particular career path, such as Law or Medicine, but this isn’t a good enough reason for the under-representation of arts-related careers. I would be wrong to say that arts degrees were the only ones under represented – those wishing to go into the field of scientific research would also have found next to nothing on offer.

If we want young people to think seriously about their careers options and ensure they find employment or an alternative such as further study, we need to ensure that they are exposed to a wide and unbiased range of possibilities. In 2014, The Independent stated that there were 18,000 graduates still unemployed six months after finishing their degree and from the limited choices available at the careers fair, I’m starting to see why.

Consider this a call to all universities to expose all of your students to as many career opportunities as possible. We are the future, after all.