Square One

It’s funny how you can graduate from a top university knowing three languages and still be lying on the sofa in your parents house on a thursday night writing a blog about how you want a job approximately 8 months later. Actually it’s not funny, it’s realistic.

When you graduate, inspiring speeches are made telling you you’re the one who will change the world, you’re the one who has their whole life in front of them and can do whatever you want. They fail to mention the fact that you will most likely move back into your parents’ house due to the lack of  funds and that no company wants you because you have no experience. It doesn’t have the same ring to it I guess. Telling a room full of new graduates that life is not going to get better but actually slightly worse is not what the university wants or what the families of the graduates want to hear. The students themselves? Well, personally I would have preferred it. Finding it out for myself after that lovely free summer where I was still coasting on the high of having no essays or revision to do and my whole life in front of me was not what I wanted.

It’s not that I haven’t tried to get a job. I’ve sent out CVs to companies who need translators. I’ve even been called to interview by a few but it just didn’t work out. The problem is I don’t really want to be a translator but I have no idea what I want to do. The problem of thousands of graduates. I once wanted to be a teacher but was put off when I volunteered to run an after-school club at the local primary school (lesson plans and kids that can’t sit still are not my thing). I then seriously considered a job as a journalist but after managing to get a week of work experience at a high-flying newspaper, I realised just how awful the atmosphere is at those kind of places. If I sit and really think what I would love to do – without thinking of real things such as money – in my mind I see myself in a small, chic flat writing articles and books with great friends and a love life. A little like Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City I suppose. But then reality brings me back and I’m back at square one.

And so here I am. At square one writing this blog. I’m here to share my journey of getting a job.

Wish me luck!

E xx