1. The Nostalgia
You’ll spend rather lot of your time wishing you were back
at uni. Dreaming of the days you could walk round to your besties house in your
PJ’s in less than 5 minutes. Where going to McDonalds at 11pm at night is the
regular practice; and the days when movie nights accidentally turn into
alcohol fuelled movie weeks are too. You may not miss the mounds of work or
dissertation research, but you regularly find yourself lusting to be back in
your old uni house living the uni life of dreams.
2. Two Years Experience
It seems that nearly every other job advert that I see
states that the company wants two or more years industry experience. However
spending the last three years at uni makes that a lil’ difficult. Us graduates
can’t get two years’ experience in industry if no one will hire us because we
don’t have the level of experience they want. It’s a vicious circle and
conundrum that a lot of graduates face on a weekly if not daily basis. And I
have to say, it’s getting rather annoying!
3. Unpaid Work
You may have a shiny new degree that you’ve spent three or
more years working your little booty off for, but to me it seems that often
doesn’t count for much. Many graduates are expected to work in unpaid roles or
internships to gain more experience. Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to
work out, but the experience gained from unpaid roles doesn’t pay for food,
transport or your household bills. Frankly it doesn’t pay for anything. After
three summers, or sometimes more, of unpaid interning many graduates expect
that once they’ve done with the uni life they’ll be able to move on to
something that gives them a little more financial stability and security. But
what I’ve learnt is that for many graduates unfortunately, that isn’t the case.
4. Some people will get jobs straight away, others won’t
Following graduation some girls I know got jobs straight
away, like literally the week after graduation they were in work at an office
in London. Other people have only just got jobs after months of unpaid
interning, and some people I know still haven’t got jobs despite months of
applications and interviews. I guess there’s no magic formula to getting a job,
no hard or fast rules. Something I’ve learnt since graduating is that often the
person with the horrendous work ethic or the one who treats everyone around
them really badly can get a job first. Whilst those people who you know have
hearts of gold or are crazy talented may still be waiting for a break. It’s
very frustrating to watch, but it seems to happen every day!
5. You can’t please everyone
Even pizza, chocolate or Nutella can’t do that, so you
definitely can’t! Whatever you choose to do with your life or time someone will
disagree or think you’re making a bad move. It could be a family member,
friend, work pal, but someone won’t be happy or agree with what it is you’re
doing. The phrase you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t comes to
mind. Over the last 8 months I’ve had people say one thing to my face and
another behind my back, I’ve had people criticise me for choosing to take time
out, I’ve had people tell me to stop being silly and just get a job at Tesco.
We will never be able to please everyone, no matter what decisions or choices
we make.
Love
God Bless
