#41

:laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing: Incredible.

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#43

was working part time at the cinema during uni so went full time for a month or two whilst applying fo other jobs. got one at a legal recruitment firm and it was single handedly the worst decision I ever made

#44

I did a vocational degree, and we finished really late in the year (the last week in June, I think). By the end I was totally burnt out and hadn’t found the time to apply for any jobs until after my final submission/crit.

At that time, in Newcastle, there were jobs available in the sector, and just about every architectural practice in the city was looking to take on graduates. I was very lucky in that respect. I made the decision to stay in the city, as it offered the best opportunities for getting a job quickly and keeping in touch with my friends, many of whom were staying in Newcastle.

The day after my final submission, I slept. The day after that I pulled my portfolio into a format suitable for applying for jobs and sent off applications. I had been pretty frugal in my final year and had enough of my loan left to last me six week’s rent and food.

I had half a dozen interviews, a couple of job offers and then started work in the first week of August. My brother graduated from Nottingham in the same year, and so the whole family, including grandparents, spent a fortnight visiting both cities, and so that was pretty much it.

#45

Moved back home, signed on, got a shit job fixing computers (which bizarrely included a day’s work experience in a laundry servicing an abattoir), got sacked after a month, signed on again, went back to university for a year, signed on again, got a real job and moved out.

That took about four years. I ended up fine.

#46

Had moved home just before the end of the year, which was a wrench after spending five years living in Cork. Broke up with a girl to go back to my ex. Worked in a sports shop. Commuted up and down to Cork for band practice. Drank way too much. Eventually went back to Cork and lived on couches until I found a room in a house and started to rehabilitate myself.

To be honest, it wasn’t a good time. I’ve still never used my degree for anything but I’ve ploughed my own furrow since then, working various office jobs and occasionally doing freelance work. I want to retrain but I’ve no money. The main thing is that I’m happy.

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#49

Stroke of luck that your cat was living in the same town.

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#51

Chilled/Went to some festivals/unemployed/worked/traveled/unemployed/sell out job/volunteered/unemployed/traveled/unemployed/did
a masters/interned/got a good job

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#53

English is a very general subject that a lot of people have degrees in. I wouldn’t worry about getting a graduate specific job. You will somewhere down the line probably apply for jobs that require a degree but it won’t necessarily be your first job out of uni. Just apply for jobs/companies that you’re interested in or at least can hack doing for a year or two and see where you go from there. Your work experience may well be more use than the degree in the short term.

#54

I don’t remember University ever being a thing for me and a lot of my friends in school or in Sixth form. I think I knew maybe one person who went?
The rest of us just went to work in an office in London and that was it because its what our mums did when they left school.

#55

I also got a 2:1 degree in English, very few extra-curricular activities (worked on the student paper in my third year and that was it), and no idea of what I wanted to do.

So I moved back in with my parents and spent the summer watching The West Wing and the Gilmore Girls and The Wire. Was pretty great. But eventually realised I needed to do something. The final straw was my dad saying he would support me at home for a couple of years if I wanted to write a novel and me realising how bullshit that sounded.

So I started just getting work experience where I could, at magazines, newspapers, online bits and bobs. Eventually at the end of the year I got offered a trainee job with a newspaper and was sent to pass my NCTJ on their dime (and was made redundant from the newspaper before I even finished the course) but used that qualification to get a job on a different newspaper, and moved across the country for that job.

For what it’s worth, I was fucking miserable working for a newspaper and I wish I’d never done it and had thought more about what I really wanted, but there you go, I guess without it I wouldn’t have ended up where I am now or whatever.

#56

Made techno music on my laptop, did a lot of washing up, did a lot of wanking. Sort of cycled between the three for a few months, then got a job in a call centre.

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#57

My first degree was computer science and business (urgh, embarrassing). I didn’t go to the graduation day, I don’t really know what happened to June/July/August (I think I just took it as easy as possible, although things were difficult with the girlfriend was with at the time), I got a proper “career” job in August as a programmer, they sent me to London six months later, have done the same sort of thing since then and been pretty miserable because I never really tried to do what I enjoyed. I would like to have made more of the opportunities to go places and travel that I were available at uni.

#58

Your dad must have been really disappointed that you didn’t just knuckle down and write a book about a wizard school like he hoped.

#59

Ha, yeah, it was kind of weird moment. I’d been making noises about wanting to be a writer for years, but when he came out and said, “Look, if you want to write a book, that’s fine, you can live with us, not pay rent, we’ll look after you, but you have to sit and do it”, it suddenly made me realise how half-baked my ambitions were and that if I ever were to write a book I should probably go and do something else first. Classic dad reverse psychology, freaked me out so much I went and got a proper job.

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#60

Started a full time job 2 days after my last exam, commuting out of London. Looking back on it, the job was ideal - it was in music and very creative and I was properly chuffed to have got it. But it being my first job, having no rest in between intensely cramming for exams and also having to commute 1.5 hrs out of London meant I burned out really quickly and had a bit of a meltdown 6 months later. I quit, went home for 6 months, worked in pub/did an internship and then came back to London where I worked in a few more pubs/bars before starting down the career path I’m still on.

My advice: enjoy bumming around for a while, maybe try and save up to do some internships, but I would strongly advise against throwing yourself into something soon after graduating, even if you are absolutely sure its what you want to do.

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#61

classic

#62

I feel for you, I found the time around graduation (and the whole first year after uni) really hard. But it was ten years ago now (!) and it all worked out after a while.

Straight after graduation I stayed in my university town for a couple of months and applied for various jobs, none of which I really wanted, and I didn’t get any interviews. So I ended up moving back with my parents. They’d moved 100-odd miles while I was at uni, so it wasn’t even moving back to my home town, but a rural village where I knew no one. I thought about becoming a teacher, so I started to apply for a PGCE and did a half term’s work experience in a school, but I felt like I wasn’t good enough to get accepted onto any courses and gave up. I ended up getting a job on the tills at Sainsbury’s just so I was doing something.

I decided that what I wanted to do was have a really good holiday then get into politics. So I stayed at Sainsbury’s for a few months, saved up all my wages, then had a brilliant few weeks crossing the US by rail. When I got back, I started applying for anything I thought I would be capable of that was advertised on W4MP (a useful site if you want something politics related). That summer was quite hard - by then it was a year since graduation, a lot of my friends had proper jobs, and I was in my parents house watching every minute of the Beijing Olympics as I had nothing else to do. But, by October, the constant applying paid off and I got what was then something of a ‘dream job’ for me, working in Parliament. (Where I shared an office with a posh young man who spent all his time on a website called Drowned in Sound, which I then joined too, and ended up meeting a lot of people who are still friends today, but that’s another story
)

Sorry, that was TLDR. Just wanted to say yeah, leaving uni sucks, especially when you don’t know what you want to do, but it’ll work out in time.

#63

I graduated really recently (2015) with an English degree from a London University. Getting your life together after university these days is really really difficult, and requires a great deal of savviness and delicate financial maneuvering. It’s worth knowing that loads of big companies and institutions will cover your travel for you. And jumping trains is always an option if you’re feeling bad ass and desperate.

I’m from rural northern Ireland and was absolutely adamant I wouldn’t have to move back there because a) there are no jobs there, like none and b) I don’t get along very well with my family, so I ran down my overdraft covering my rent for the last two months of my lease and worked a variety of jobs, including part time at my university library, at a gelato shop, and​ (depressingly) as a receptionist at an insurance firm. Oh, and I did financial admin for a start up, but I was so shit at it I got fired within two weeks. I did an interview for a trainee job at the daily express which was so evil and depressing i walked out, and considered doing phone sex on more than one occasion. I got rejected from loads of jobs, and the financial pressure​ was crazy. I eventually got a trainee job as a legal librarian working within a law firm. My team were amazing and I loved it - I then transferred to another law firm to work as a research librarian for more money, and hated it. Generally​ realised I didn’t want to work somewhere corporate, and managed to get out of there within six months and got a job working in an academic library. That’s been it really. I’m starting a master’s in librarianship via Sweden (it’s free) and hoping doing that will make me more money (I took a pay cut to go from corporate libraries to academic, and it’s been tough.)

#64

wasn’t cg was it?

#65

Got it in one

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