Unemployable

Why am I so unattractive to graduate schemes?

As the end of University looms ever closer I have been forced to start accepting the fact that I need to at least try to mould some kind of career for myself. From a young age I blithely told myself that my ‘career’ was going to be a writer without really taking into account the fact that being a successful writer rarely happens overnight (unless you write a book about a woman with an obsession for being degraded by men with their sex toys and their condescending yet apparently attractive nature) and that, in all likelihood, being a writer would mean living off pot noodles. So instead I’ve tried to find some kind of career that will allow me to write on someone else’s terms such as advertising, journalism and copy writing.

The problem I have found is that when writing a CV there are certain things you are meant to mention and certain things that you are not. For example, an employer will love that you’ve worked for the university newspaper or you’re a member of the rowing team. They’ll applaud the fact that you once arranged a car wash to raise money to re-do the student union. An employer will adore that once a month you’ve gone live on the university radio. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not belittling these ‘extra-curricular’ activities, I just feel that the things that have made me a more rounded person can’t be put down on a CV and I don’t think it’s fair.

Take my gap year for example. For many people, a gap year means a year long holiday under the pretence of ‘saving the children/animals/trees’. Their gap year is filled with alcohol, parties and casual sex with foreign people. Whatever, your choice. But whilst these people decided to ‘find themselves’ on a beach in the middle of paradise, I ‘found myself’ by working my arse off in a restaurant surrounded by rude customers and pitiful tips. The issue I have with employers looking at CVs is that immediately they seem to think that the person who has gone on a yearlong holiday is the person with more life experience rather than the person who decided to live in the real world and pay the bills that needed to be paid. I didn’t run from my life during my gap year, I worked for it and I would argue that gives me far more life experience. I lived in the real world and I don’t see how that makes me more unattractive.

I also didn’t go away to live in student halls whilst at Uni. Some people thought that was a mistake but it worked for me. I don’t like living in other people’s mess, I made the decision to walk away with as little debt from university as possible and I enjoy the life I have at home. I’ve had a job since I was 16 and I started paying rent to my mum the minute I left school. I pay for my car, my car insurance, my petrol, road tax, my own food and I also contribute towards bills now that I live with my boyfriend. Everything I have in my life I have worked for. I am not trying to belittle the people that did decide to go to uni, I am belittling the CV screening process that seems to think I am not worthy of at least an interview. I believe the decisions I’ve made in my life and the amount I have worked for what I have is a true reflection of my character and is something that would make me an asset to potential employers. I didn’t join the netball/dancing/jazz society because I went home from Uni and I went to work, but I can’t put that on my CV. For people that did join those societies, good for you because you’ve made your CV a lot more attractive, I chose to go down a route that I think makes me just as capable. Unfortunately for me, I’m not allowed to put down ‘being an adult from the age of 16’ as my listed interest.

 

Serious post about a serious issue in my life

As previously established, bumping into people I haven’t seen for a prolonged period of time causes me much anxiety. Since I’m finishing Uni this year, the natural question that gets asked at these awkward meetings is, ‘so what do you want to do when you finish studying?’ This is a pretty ordinary question to ask and it’s not unexpected that someone might be interested to know what you intend to do at the end of 16 years of regimented learning. However, for people like me, the question can be jaw clenchingly annoying. It’s not an annoyance at the person asking the question (because why would they not?), it’s an annoyance of being reminded that you have absolutely no life plan.

I feel such envy for people that have studied vocational courses. If you do medicine, you become a doctor. If you study teaching, you become a teacher. There is a natural progression and knowing that you will slide into the profession you want to do is such a luxury. Studying history means there isn’t really a profession waiting for me at the end of my degree. Obviously you get every third person saying ‘are you gonna become a histoooorian? Are you gonna work in a museeeeeum?’ without really taking into account that just because you have studied history it doesn’t mean you want to spend your time in a dusty museum trying to stop people stealing dinosaur bones. History is not vocational and ‘working in a museum’ is not the career at the end of the history degree road. The problem is that there is no real career.

History is a really interesting degree and I’m glad I did it. I feel that I am a more rounded person for it and if nothing else, history has taught me ‘how to think’. I absolutely resent anyone who says ‘what’s the point in learning history? It’s in the past’. If you want to understand anything about the world we live in today you need to know how we got to this place. Without people studying history, we are doomed to repeat it (although that seems to happen regardless of how many people studying history).  History is a lot of writing essays. I would argue there is more flexibility in writing a history degree than, say, an English literature degree because there is no ‘looking for hidden messages’ and regurgitating what your lecturer has told you. With a history essay you are able to take a period in history and come to your own conclusions as to what event led to what repercussions.  Of course that leads to potential failure when writing an essay because if your lecturer doesn’t agree with what you are saying, you’re likely to find yourself hitting the 2:2 margin. Hard. I recently wrote an essay about the extent to which you could call Hitler a weak dictator. To someone that hasn’t studied history it might seem like a ridiculous question, but to a history student it is a question that opens up all kinds of different avenues to study. The feedback on my essay said that I’d obviously worked hard, deserved a good grade but my tutor didn’t agree with my fundamental argument. I managed to scrape a 2:1 but it’s very frustrating when your tutor is acknowledging your hard work but due to the flexibility in historical arguments, I didn’t gain the mark I felt I deserved.

In a perfect world, I’d be aiming for a career in writing. I’d love to work in journalism but I know that if my CV and a journalism student’s CV were put in front of a potential employer, my CV probably wouldn’t make the cut. It’s frustrating that, I would argue, history teaches you to write just as much as a journalism degree does, but the title of the subjects means that a journalism student will take precedence over me. Writing is a passion of mine, but I chose to take a different path than the average journalism student and I fear that will be to my detriment in the long run. I’m leaving university feeling I have learnt a lot with my history degree, but that perhaps I should have chosen a path in order to secure a more stable future life plan.