Undergraduates: stop panicking! A bit!

Many final year students are heading into the pre-graduation depression phase. Jobs and further study courses all seem hopeless, dissertation deadlines are looming, and the issue of where to live next year seems like it will never be resolved. You have to start getting out of bed early soon and NOTHING FUN WILL EVER HAPPEN AGAIN.

The only reason I'm not calling this part a graduate myth is because it mostly concerns undergraduates and there's only so much I can calm your nerves, given this blog is called the Disorientated Graduate. Look, being a graduate, on balance, isn't as fun as being a student. You have to pay council tax, for a start. And this time of year is a bloody horrible one. Here are some survival tips and hopefully some slightly encouraging words. (I'll try to keep council tax discussions for a minimum.)

1. You have to finish your degree first! This is important! You have worked for several years towards the degree, and now is the time to buckle down. Yes, it's as much fun as a brick to the head, but it's a very satisfying feeling to hand in a fully bound dissertation, and finishing exams is a sweet, sweet day. I got so drunk in the afternoon after my last exam (with lecturers, natch) that I forgot how to get home to the house I'd lived in for two years. (I found it in the end, but had a very peaceful twenty minutes sat on a kerb trying to work stuff out.)

Seriously, though, you've spent years at the place, you might as well try to come out with a degree. Logically you're reasonably intelligent and worked hard to get into the place to begin with, so you may as well not have all those years wasted.

2. You may not have a job yet, or have heard back from the post-graduate course. You may not have bothered applying. This was an unwise move, but there we go. Get your head down and start applying right now. Speak to your careers advisers. You probably still not find something, but having applications in is a good feeling, and filling out those deadly dull forms is good experience. No, really, it is.

N.B. If you have a job lined up, or a post-graduate role, than congratulations! You are awesome, and be proud of your achievement! Don't be a dick about it though. I know someone who got onto a successful graduate scheme and is now complaining to anyone that will listen that 'they're too good' for accountancy. Fuck that noise. If you don't want the job, don't apply for it. Don't turn it down because buddy, unemployment is a lot less fun. Also all of your friends hate you now. If you hate the job after doing some time in it, that's a different kettle of fish, but don't wipe it off straight away. Also, as a recent graduate, you're not too good for ANYTHING just yet. You've seen the youth unemployment figures, right?

3. Don't worry right now if employers and universities haven't got back to you. This application is the most important thing in the world to you, but not to them. They will get back in due course. Send a polite e-mail, perhaps, but don't nag and don't waste hours fretting.

4. This is no way cancels out the first point, but do try to find time for socialising. Graduate life doesn't have that sense of student camaraderie, or not as often. Enjoy it!

5. Try not to worry too much. At some point things will start falling into place, at least a bit. Don't listen to everyone who tells you that things will be magically amazing when you graduate, because that's a lie. You will have to work, and work hard, but it isn't all council tax and bleak unremitting horror. You can put the heating on, and go on holiday occasionally, and that really is all quite exciting when you think about it.

Now try and ignore my blog for a bit, because you need to believe in point 5 to get you through the last bits of university and I suspect that I may be more bitter than usual until the kids in the flat upstairs start sleeping through the night, or the mad busy seasonal work in my office lays off a bit. One or the other would be a relief.

Party like it's 2005

I have recently been to a few Social Gatherings – okay, boozy birthday house parties – of people that are mostly graduates. This in itself isn't too much of an interesting blog post, as all I can say is that getting absolutely plastered as a graduate is just like getting absolutely plastered as a student, with the exception that ageing in general means that the hangovers get longer and more painful. I don't think I can blame that one on being ill-prepared for graduate life. Alas.

However, at a recent gathering we were all sharing horror stories about being students, including the Spanish test in which I solemnly informed my tutor that my sister was a tall man. Or my old housemate who forgot in an exam whether North and South Korea were, in fact, different countries and went for “the two warring areas”. Amazingly, though, we got to the point where we were comparing our respective careers, and the difficulty of trying to explain our lives to people.

“Oh,” giggled one friend, who is training to be a solicitor. “You'd think mine would be straight forward, but a six year old asked what I did.”

“And?”

“She asked if being a solicitor meant I had to solicit people!”

There are worse graduate careers, we all agreed, before rolling off the sofa laughing. Then we played Articulate for three hours straight, wherein someone thought “Nice jumper, place in between Pakistan and India?” was in fact Arran rather than Kashmir.

Truly, our respective educations were worth it.

A-Level results day

Today is A-Level results day, and oh my, I still feel sick when I see pictures of people opening their results. My results were, frankly, splendid – this was back in the day when I achieved things, of course. Still, it was a horrible and dreadful morning when I pulled myself out of bed and prepared myself for having abjectly failed to get into university and having to spend the rest of my life doing the cleaning job I had picked up for the summer.

(In the end, as you know, I went to university. This blog would be the most dull internet hoax ever otherwise.)

Whilst I don’t envy modern students the higher levels of debt, or indeed the horror that must have been applications this year, I am wildly jealous of people preparing to go to university. I was unbelievably nervous about preparing for university – filling in forms about housing, confirming my student loans, buying an abundance of stationary. It was all worth it, though; I met a great group of people very early on, most of whom I was actually living with via the power of fate. It was all worth it in the end – I still wouldn’t trade my university days for anything.

That said, some advice if you are preparing to become an undergraduate.

1. All of the advice you will read will advise you to take tea and coffee making equipment in order to try and find friends. Everyone else has read this advice. EVERYONE. My new housemates and I awkwardly made tea for each other for hours until we realised this one. (The trick: biscuits. Everyone likes HobNobs.)
2. You know what you need? And you won’t pack? It’s a cheese grater, my friends. You’ll thank me when it comes to late night cheese toasties.
3. Finally, don’t pay too much heed to old fogeys like me bitching on the internet that being a graduate sucks. It does suck, but you have years to go before you get to that stage.

Enjoy it. It’s scary and wild and bizarre, but it’s an opportunity to be relished. Plus, you get to be excitingly disillusioned in about three years time.

Guardian Supplement - The Fresher