The End of Crisp Choice

Graduation is one of those bitter-sweet moments in life. Bitter, because it’s the end of three years of drunken debauchery, lie in’s, next to no accountability, lie-in’s, and the only big decision that needs to be made is whether to go for McCoys or Walkers Cheese and Onion crisps. It’s sweet because it’s the end of university; this is the time when we finally get handed the keys to the real world, where we’re expected to go out and start changing the world, one day at a time. Of course, this is what is meant to happen. In September 2010, this no longer applies. No more was this drilled home to me than later that graduation night, where, as I like to think (hope?), all great decisions are made, the pub.

I suppose a tiny amount of background is in order, because what’s an opening blog without it? I’m a 21 year old Politics graduate of Sussex university. Having left Sussex (and the broader city of Brighton), I now live back at home with my Mum and Dad in South-West London. I have two older brother (seven and nine years older respectively), both of whom are graduates of the University of Southampton, and who both work in marketing up in town. I’d like to think I was a fairly conventional student. I did my work around a schedule of parties, booze and telly. My house and I had a cat against the wishes of our tenants agreement. I went home every third or fourth weekend to have washing done and to eat decent food. In my three years I had barely mastered the art of scrambled eggs. Like I said, fairly typical student.

There were two events which took place that have truly informed my opinion of what it means to be a graduate in today’s day and age, the second being that graduation pub trip. The first occurred on results day, that tradition of arriving onto campus to find your degree result pinned to a notice board, for the rest of your classmates to see. See the photo in the top left of the page...

As you can see the majority are “Upper Seconds,” i.e. the magic 2:1. As the day developed, and I went to various other courses results parties, the other boards showed a broadly similar picture. As, later on, our extended group of friends sat outside the bar on campus with a jug of Pimm’s and a smile on our faces, it became obvious very quickly that everyone there had achieved a 2:1. Everyone. Out of a cross-section of about 15 people, spread over courses the range of the university, everyone had achieved the same result. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry was the same. In fact, looking over all of my University acquaintances, I only would consider myself friends with one person who achieved a first. I only knew one person who had been awarded a 2:2. This struck me as odd.

The second event which shaped my thinking on graduates and their futures was that fateful graduation pub trip. What made it different from all the others, apart from that I wasn’t a student anymore, was that my brothers were there. It being a trip made immediately after graduation, and that my brothers like to mention I have no idea what I want to do with my life and am therefore a massive twat, the conversation turned to graduate jobs. My brothers, having graduated from their initial degrees in 2003 and 2004, were telling us how almost all of their friends had had jobs lined up for the immediate aftermath of University, ranging from Sky TV, to management consultancy, and, in my brothers case a year later after his Masters, accountancy. What they were shocked to find, and which I had not even realised, was that not one of my friends had a job lined up post-graduation. I should qualify that distinction; by that I mean a job in which you could expect to spend a number of years advancing slowly up the ladder, as opposed to, for example, working in a retail environment. Sure, I know several people who have lined up post-grad education, several are about to begin training for their PGCE, several are beginning Masters courses, and the individual who achieved a first is going onto Cambridge. But in terms of real-world jobs, there are very few out there.

Those are my initial thoughts on the fate of graduates from the class of 2010, and, if you hadn’t guessed from the title, that’s pretty much will be what this blog is going to be about. Those issues that face all of those who are entering the big, scary, world of work. And it’s not all going to be about jobs and what-not; it’s going to look issues such as moving back in with your parents, an event a lot of us are going to have to put up with as, especially in London, it becomes increasingly difficult to afford rent/ deposits (eventually!), and the sudden loss of independence, the trials of unpaid internships, and maybe even a bit of stuff about planning gap years as I try to run away from the job market we’ve entered into. And hopefully I’ll make it vaguely interesting. Hopefully.