Milk snatcher

Margaret Thatcher died today.

Let's get a few things out of the way: I feel sorry for her family's loss, and also a lingering set of twilight years with dementia followed by a stroke is an unpleasant way to go. And yes, she was the first female Prime Minister.

Right. Now we have said that, let's say some other things.

I will not mourn the end of a woman who is responsible for some fucking awful things in our country, and is still responsible now. I don't have a full set of all the awful things she did, but during her time as Prime Minister the working classes of this country were ground down into worklessness, entire communities made into poverty-ridden ghost towns. Those cities haven't recovered yey. Those cities in the north, in Scotland, in Wales, may never recover because the poisonous politics that started with her still tell them that they're wastrels, that they're not worth anything. The problems we have now still continue, and her political descendents are destroying what is left in some of those communities.

I will not mourn Section 28, a legacy I was still dealing with when I was in comprehensive education, a time when queer kids and adults were given no support by public funds. By 'no support' this meant no protection of homophobic bullying, amongst a raft of other things. This still continues.

I will not mourn someone who supported apartheid in South Africa.

I will not mourn someone who sank the Belgrano when it was retreating.

I will not mourn privatisation of vital services. I will not mourn the idea that it's somehow okay for people to make profit off the back of heating, light and clean water.

I will not mourn someone who kickstarted the excesses of our financial markets.

I am the daughter of working class parents. I grew up on the edge of one of those decimated communities. So you'll forgive me, right now, if I am having a drink. I'm not doing it to celebrate her death, but I am doing it to remember all of the tragedy and horror she caused, and her legacy is still causing.

Over dramatic? Yeah, probably. Depending on when the funeral is, though, it may well block my ability to get into work as the cortege will be going very near my offices. I have a long weekend coming up, but unless the funeral is on Friday or Monday it will directly affect my ability to get into work. Whether I want to or not, it's being put directly in my way.

Those are my thoughts. I appreciate you may have different ones. I don't pretend to understand them, if I'm honest.

Graduate recruitment: trainee vurglesplatters needed!

So, in a hilarious turn for the weird, in my new job one of my responsibilities in graduate recruitment.

“Do you know anything about graduate issues?” they asked me, and I sort of burbled a bit and then got afraid they'd seen my blog. (IF SO: HI GUYS.)

I actually really enjoy my job. People are still nice, I'm getting more responsibilities, I don't have horrible jaggy days where I hate myself and my job so much I just want to cry or burn down the office or possibly both. Okay, I still occasionally think 'Is this it?' and the Circle line is the bane of my life, but things are on the up.

My job has also opened my eyes about graduate recruitment. Now, I've actually been part of several recruitment drives before, and I've also a few years now of HR and employment law and all that stuff. All the things I've said previously remain valid. However, never before had I seen specific graduate recruitment. Sure, I've seen the other side of it as an applicant, but this is new to me.

And finally! it means I have something relevant for blogging about. My reflections on London, whilst fascinating to myself, are a wee bit off message, and a lot of the other stuff is difficult to write about in a sufficiently anonymous way.

So, for future reference, I work in a company that specialises in providing vurglesplat experts to the wider world. What's vurglesplat, you say. Well, bluntly, it's a small industry full of nerds and I'm not being specific. Crucially, I work in the HR department. The technological people may as well be doing vurglesplat for all I understand of it. It makes for an entertaining night at the pub, where they talk about their projects and then look at me expectedly.

Anyway, we are now looking for junior vurglesplatters. Vurglesplat is something you can study at uni in modules and in specific postgrad courses, and even if your interest is only peripheral then it's okay, because lots of training is provided. Good degree in something vaguely relevant – business! maths! IT! engineering! all elements towards vurglesplat! - and perhaps some work in the field, ish, and that's all we're asking.

Stupidly, I thought this would be easy.

Here are some of the reasons why graduate recruitment is harder than it needs to be.

1. Vurglesplatters are really, really bad at explaining their job. You have no idea how long it took to come up with a job advertisement. “No,” I had to keep on gently saying, “two years industry experience is not a reasonably request.”

2. Once that's done, have you ANY IDEA how terrible university job centre websites are? UNIMAGINABLY AWFUL that's what. As all sensible students and graduates now, they are a great resource for looking up jobs that are specifically hiring from their particular institution. I did hours of research about universities that offered vurglesplat and did a good course using similar vurglesplat theories. I looked up league tables. Careers Centre, I want to hire YOUR students. WHY OH WHY do you have websites that are nigh on impossible to use and why do you staff not reply to emails?

(Although I'd like to take a moment to big up my alma mater St Andrews for its swift response within 20 minutes to my query. Knew I could trust you, guys! Some other institutions, that will remain nameless, have stayed quiet for a WEEK now.)

In all seriousness, a job that should have taken perhaps an afternoon at best – simply uploaded a job specification to 25+ institutions, how hard can that be? - took me three days. I do have other work to do, you know.

3. Yes, yes, it's probably easier to advertise on Milkround and Prospects. They cost a lot of money, did you know that?

So, all of those things are an issue and a barrier between graduates and soon-to-be gradautes getting a job.

I can't talk much about the process, because it's only just got started. However, we have started to get some applications through. We don't have an application form with lots of silly questions, because no one wants to write it, bluntly. All we ask for is a CV. Here are The Disorientated Graduate's hints and tips to get through the screening process (i.e., er, me):

1. We are asking for people to be vurglesplatters. Sure, trainee vurglesplatters, but it's still a specific role. DO NOT tell me about how much you're enjoying training to be an English teacher. Seriously, though, did you even read the job specification? DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG IT TOOK TO UPLOAD IT TO YOUR INSTITUTION?

2. Grammar and spelling are your friend! So, it must be said, is a covering letter. They're not essential, but it's a good way of listing your 'soft skills'.

3. You may not have relevant industry experience. When I left uni, my industry experience was to be a cleaner, a care home assistant or a shop worker. So I sympathise with you, particularly if you have a good academic background and have passed the first two stages of my checklist. So, as a hint, turn your part time job into an example of how good you are at the world of work based on the job specification. Does the job want good time management? Well, you need that if you work in a shop because of the different tasks that need doing WHILST still being able to drop everything and serve a customer! Teamwork? Well, being a waiter involves being part of a chain of people involved in one single aim! Think outside of the box, a bit. Personally I'm deeply sympathetic but there's only so much I can to make other people look at your CV.

4. To return to point 1, seriously, do look at the job you're applying for though, yes? I am fed up of logging POINTLESS applications.

That's the only experience I have thus far. We've barely started shifting through applications, let alone interviewing and that. Still, it's interesting and also GOOD BLOG MATERIAL.

Now if you'll excuse me I have a stinking cold and need to return to curling up in a blanket.

Dealing with weird hobbies

I used to work in a relatively small workplace with what I now realise was a reasonably homogeneous workplace. As long as you could talk about the football you were generally okay – we all came from roughly the same place and the same background. Hell, three of us had history degrees. On one notable afternoon we discussed Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. We discussed minor character plot points. This was considered normal.

I now work in a significantly bigger workplace which is a bit of a surprise and has a lot of stuff I wasn't quite expecting. I was prepared for the fact there would be people from a wider variety of cultures, and I'm enjoying that. I'm not the only northerner but I'm the only recent one, so I quite enjoyed telling the sales team what the term 'reet' meant. (Translation: “Right” or in context “Alright,” so you might say in response to a query “Nah, I'm reet ta!” which is a sentence that really puzzles my Scottish inlaws.) People bring in food on national festivals, for example, so whilst I am getting fatter I am at least becoming more enlightened. All of that is good.

No, the real surprise is what a wide variety of people I work with and trying to find common ground. I am a fairly quiet geeky sort. I work in a geeky, male-dominated industry so I assumed that I would fit right in with a bit of Star Trek, but this doesn't appear to be the case thus far.

Firstly, I appear to have arrived in the middle of a baby boom. I am mildly childphobic, or at least in term of actually sprogging up myself, so to be constantly surrounded by people who are pregnant/have partners who are pregnant/be just back from maternity/paternity leave is a very bizarre experience. I'm fairly good at expressing interest in other people's kids. My cheery excuse of “I live in a one bedroom flat in Walthamstow!” means that I can put off the 'when are you going to have kids?' question for now, but I do idly wonder how I will deal with the same question in my thirties.

Also, other people's hobbies are really weird. I'm quite good at deflecting football questions, but I have no idea how to discuss one colleague's deep and abiding interest in Rolls Royces. That said, no one appears to share my passion for London restoration architecture – I got very excited about a Wren church near my work and everyone else was baffled.

Also, I would be posting more often but I must confess to being sort of constantly exhausted at the moment. I have lots of fascinating stuff to write about, but finding the time to do so is a little tricky. When you spend all day learning about classic cars (despite your personal inclinations of 'you're a nice guy, but I really don't care, please be quiet') I think the brain shuts down a little. 

Alas, no one in my work practises extreme ironing. I think.

Shock: you deserve to not hate your job

One of the really weird things about my new job is that I don't hate it.

Now, that might sound like boasting, but it's mostly given me so much-needed perspective about my old job, my first real 'graduate' job. I was there for three years, and it's very weird the awful, awful things you start to take as being both normal and entirely acceptable. It wasn't quite full on Stockholm Syndrome, but there was an element of pushing things to the back of my mind and pretending that they were a-okay.

You see – and I speak for a lot of graduates, I think, of the last five years or so – is that we have been made to feel quietly worthless. Not being NEETs, generally speaking being childless, having a public perception (whether true or not) that we have parents to fall back on and not having mortgages, etc, there was a sense that we were constantly at the back of the queue. We're all useless, with our silly degrees and no hard experience, expecting to walk into an amazing job. We should be grateful for any kind of paid employment we should have because we deserve no better.

Which has led to some employers, frankly, taking the piss.

I'm not going to go too far into details, mostly because my old employer is litigation-happy and liable to withhold references, but basically I put up with a long list of crap. I casually mentioned in my newest job that there was CCTV at my old work, which took in our computers and the boss would occasionally watch it on his laptop at home if he was running late. Stunned horror met this statement. I... sort of didn't realise that wasn't normal? There's CCTV in many workplaces, I realise that, but in an office was that strictly necessary?

That's just one example, and a rather specific and non-graduate one at that. The point is that I was willing to put up with everything, despite the fact that I was deeply unhappy and often fantasised about somehow crashing my car in a non-fatal way in order to miss work that day.

Graduates, you will have to put up with some crap in your working lives. My last job had some good things about it, and got me some much-needed office experience, but in the end I was too scared by the economy to move on.

Let's get some things straight: my new job isn't perfect by a long stretch. New people are scary, and these are a lot of new people in a very technical field that I mostly don't understand yet. Some of the work is a bit monotonous. The Tube is still a challenge most day, and the day is a significantly longer one. I don't look good in proper office clothes, either. But I don't wake up unhappy, and I've remembered that actually I am a rather intelligent human being, I have worked hard, and I deserve a job where I can proudly say: “I've earned this.”

Graduates: you will almost certainly have to put up with crappy jobs, but don't stay with them forever because you think you should, because you think you're no better, because you're scared. My new job is not a perfect job, but it's a damn sight better and life feels like a better place.

Most of the above is not particularly enthralling blog material, which is why it's been a few weeks to put together. However, I think I may be getting some more material together soon, and you can always rely on the government to say some face-gnawingly stupid things before too long. So there's something to look forward to.

New job

When I left university, I assumed that I would have a job in a busy city, striding through crowds wearing a business suit and clutching a Starbucks on the way to an important meeting type thing. This rather failed to materialise. My first job post university was working in a trendy-yet-casual clothes shop so I used to sit amongst the commuters in jeans and a hoodie, and nip for a MacDonalds breakfast when I was trying to bribe some of the younger members of staff. (Management tip of the day for you, there.)

Anyway. Now, to my amazement, I am in fact battling through business crowds whilst wearing a smart suit. I'm not holding Starbucks, because I dislike coffee and Starbucks is just as evil as we always suspected. My first day, as I proudly strode through (and by 'strode' I mean battled in a sort of nervous, 'oh god I'm so short' way) the crowd, I felt sort of proud.

Then I realised that I was totally hopeless at this.

The reason there's been such a long hiatus is because 'Disorientated Graduate' is something that came about when I used to be able to walk to work, and I wondered at what point in my university life it came about I was only suited to work in an office on a farm in the arse end of nowhere. So yelling in an overjoyed way 'LOOK! I HAVE A JOB I DON'T ACTUALLY LOATHE!' was a little cruel to my readers, all three of you.

Yet the last fortnight has proven to me that university has failed to get me used to just about anything. I have stopped internally screaming on the Tube (at one point, even emitting a faint squeak when I realised that yes, yet more people really were going to join our train, let's talk about the Circle line at some point in the future), but gosh, this is a new world. I have no idea how to behave, not really.

One thing I have learnt, though: big offices are <i>weird</i>. More anon.

Moving house (a hiatus)

A query: what, exactly, does everyone else do with their old university work? I have carried it, in the manner of a demanted pack rat, around several houses now and it's currently sat in shiny new boxes (yes, plural) waiting to be moved to the new house tomorrow. Mr DG has managed to get everything into two folders.

I have no idea if this is weird. From one perspective, my mum still has all her college work in boxes in the attic. From another perspective, she actually has an attic, a house she owns, and no intention to move house until she leaves this one in a wooden box. (Her words, not mine.) My university folders are a thing of beauty, preceding my love of filing in a professional manner. I don't want to get rid of them!

Anyway, whilst you all ponder these issues (tell me what you do in the comments!) this is a wee hiatus announcement. Tomorrow, I am moving to London. Today, I am mostly going to and from the recycling centre (I can get rid of, you know, other stuff, I just have a block on uni stuff), packing up the kitchen and trying not to freak out. I'm only writing this post as part of my magnificent ability to procrastinate. After moving, there will be no internet for about a week or so, resulting in some quietness from me.

A bit of consideration, people

As we all probably know, it's currently an employers market when it comes to jobs. I was staying in London with a family friend for a set of interviews, and he wondered if they still reimbursed you for travelling to interviews. I laughed uproariously. I do dimly remember a time, back just before I graduated, when job applications had dire messages telling you that they couldn't reimburse for travel. So clearly, it used to happen. Not any more.

I have become used to not having results from job applications. It's got to the point where getting a rejection letter is actually rather enjoyable, because at least SOMEONE has read the application.

You know what's really bloody rude though? When you've been for an interview and they still don't get in contact with you. One interview I went to – three weeks ago! - told me I'd hear back within 24 hours. After a week, I sent a polite e-mail enquiring about when I might hear a response. At the start of the next week, they told me. It is only today that they've rejected me. And not just a rejection, oh no. They told me that they'd 'decided not to recruit for the role'. So you've dragged me down to London and now you've decided the job doesn't exist? Are you fucking KIDDING me?

There's a bright side to all this, and it's that I've actually been offered a job. Yeehaw! They also didn't get back to me within the predicted timeframe, but I did get a message saying there would be a delay. It takes two minutes to send an e-mail like that, employers. It's not hard. The job I've got is the one I wanted more than the rest by quite a large margin, but I needed work for my move to London.

There is also the very real possibilities of what happens if you wait a long time to let someone know the results. I am, it must be said, enjoying telling people that since my interview I have interviewed for, been offered and accepted another job.

One of the elements of my new job? Sending feedback to candidates who have interviewed for the company, successful or otherwise. Having this element of respect for people who don't even work for the company is a very good sign, in my eyes. Also, no poverty for Christmas. Wheeee!

Just... have some respect, employers. Someone has taken the time to apply to your company, travel to the interview, iron the interview suit, go through the preparation and the nerves. Even if they're no good, it takes a tiny amount of time to let people know how they've got on. We may be the faceless mass of desperate people to you, but one day you might be the same boat. Think about it.

Interview preparation, and possibly how not to do it

Job interviews are HARD. I go in intending to have the self confidence and general awesomeness of this:

What actually happens is this:

The only bright side to my current round of interviews is that my current employer knows they're happening, which means at least I don't have to come up with an increasingly large roster of dead relatives and hospital appointments. This is about the only good side.

I haven't done any interviews for a long while, and I haven't done a successful interview for even longer, so to say I'm out of practice would be an understatement. Before we even get to the interview itself, there's all the stuff around it. In my case, this has involved buying an interview suit that actually fits, wearing in a new pair of shoes, and remembering where I had put all of my see-through piercing gauges. (I am aware I am getting too old to be as heavily pierced as I am, but there we go.) This is more difficult than I remembered, although that said I've never been very good at shopping.

After that, there's the travel arrangements. I'm quite good at negotiating my way around public transport systems – if you can work out Salzburg, you can do anything – but getting to London in time for an interview without re-mortgaging your house is a difficult task. I don't even have a house to re-mortgage. That's just depressing. Plus, you have to find the interview location itself. One recent interview gave me a map to their office from the train station. Like a fool, I trusted it, which led to me wandering in circles around a suburban Surrey town for forty five minutes last week. NEVER AGAIN.

Then you have to prepare for the interview. Now, there's a fair amount of research you can do using the internet and a bit of nous, but there are a great deal of unknowns. You have to put together a question to ask,which is nigh on impossible, and try to remember your own work history and how it links in with the company and the job description. Chances are your application was some time in the distant past, so you also have to remember the spin you put on it as well.

I haven't heard anything back from any of the interviews I've had thus far, so I have no idea just how badly I crashed and burned in any of them, or if indeed the preparation listed above was any use. All the preparation in the world doesn't make a damn difference, because you can't control how well you do or do not get on with someone. Or indeed, my tendency to babble a little. 

I have another interview next week too, hence the fact I'm typing this rather than actually doing said preparation. Fingers crossed at least one of them comes back with something positive, and I can get on with everything else to do with moving across the whole country, i.e. freaking out about the sheer amount of stuff we own and making some fairly random donations to the various charity shops in my local area.

London! Yay?

So, after years in a small town in the North of England, I am taking the well worn graduate path and moving down to London.

I would like to pretend this is because I have a shiny new job, but actually it's because my husband has a shiny new job and I am so ready for a change. When I was a student, I sort of assumed I'd end up moving to a large city, drinking lattes and using public transport. I ended back up in a small town I grew up in, managing to move all of ten miles down the road to the coast 18 months ago to a marginally larger town. I'll admit, there's a stonking pub here but that's about it.

As such, I am wildly excited. We're moving towards the end of next month. I remain excited until you ask me the following questions:

1. Where are you going to live?

2. What are you going to do for a living?

3. How do you plan to move that monstrosity you call a sofa down the stairs, anyway?

Then I sort of crumble and have to try to resist the urge to have a little cry.

Now, we are sort of coping with part 1 via going flat hunting at the weekend, and part 3 has been solved with the grim resolve of spending a large amount of money on a moving firm. I am proud of our large amount of mismatching but sturdy furniture, and I simply can't face going furniture shopping in the near future. Logically, the best thing to do is schlep it all down to London, and to prevent Mr DG and I divorcing with less than a year under our belt we may as well avoid the arguments that our mutual attempts to move furniture cause.

Part 2 is one filled with fear and horror and a grim sense of denial. Do I have a job lined up yet? No. Do I have a plan? Only if wildly flailing counts.

Still, I suppose it's more relevant to a graduate blog as we discuss my wild scrabbles through the world of jub hunting. I'm still in my current job at the moment, but desperately trying to persuade employers that I am really very good at administration and should be taken on for the specialist administration roles I'm applying for. OR EVEN A WRITING JOB TO ANYONE READING THIS. Yes, I actually do enjoy administration work, or to be precise I rather prefer getting paid and administration is the quickest way to do it. Quietly I hope I'm going to use this move to find paid employment writing stuff – are you reading this, employers? I can create content for PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING, you should see my portfolio, ASK TO SEE MY PORTFOLIO PLEASE?! However, I enjoy eating and paying rent more than I want to be a starving artist, so now it's a desperate scrabble for a job.

Still, a small and dirty part of me thinks that at least this will be stonking blogging material. Between the job hunt and the move and the new place, I am set up for MONTHS to come, before we even get to the whole bitter Northerner issue.

Plus, bonus Kermit gif.

Feeling slightly left behind (this time, avoiding libel!)

I had a very weird experience in work the other day. We have Radio 1 on in work, despite all being way too old for the demographic. (I want Radio 6, other staff want Radio 5, some losers want Magic, weirdly on that list Radio 1 is the middle ground. We all like Scott Mills.) Anyway, it chirps along in the background, excluding occasionally howling abuse at Fern Cotton. No one really listens to it, but it keeps the office from weird silence.

No, really, I'm going somewhere with this.

Anyway, the radio was chirping away, and I was vaguely aware of Fern Cotton and another female presenter talking cheerfully about a hot new boyband, and how the lead singer was the only one worth looking at. Christina, my desk buddy, suddenly gave a shriek.

“Disorientated Graduate! That bloke they're talking about! You went to school with him!”

[n.b. Christina went to a different high school, but in the same small town – the crossover of people known is fairly high.]

Anyway, I listened properly and gave out a small shriek myself. “OH MY GOD, I DID!”

He's the closest thing from my school year that constitutes a celebrity, obviously excluding my upcoming fame as a writer. He was on a popular talent show, albeit without getting through to the live shows or having too much TV time, and dated a famous female singer for quite a long time. Then they broke up, and an ex-colleague of mine, who lives opposite the chap in question's parents, informed me she broke up with him because he 'didn't earn enough money, and she wanted a man to earn more money than she did'. I am, as such, failing to name any of the people involved so I'm not sued for libel. (DISCLAIMER: I would also like to point in that I have no idea if the aforementioned story is true, and is probably just slightly malicious gossip. Amusing, though.)

Anyway, I did some googling and was highly amused to see that the chap in question is in fact the lead singer of an up and coming boyband of whom even I've heard of, although he's got a lot of fake tan and a bit of a perm involved.

Then I felt a bit depressed, and a little bit old as well. Or possibly that I'm getting left behind, a little bit, mostly because one of my dearest friends just had a baby and has now made a lovely little family. One of my fondest (and fuzziest) memories of aforementioned friend is in our first year at university when we got legless at a Rocky Horror themed night at the union, and I think we're still on the Union website in our underwear, convinced we look sexy. Now she's a mother, and a radiant one at that. And someone I still remember singing in the Year 3 Christmas play has a song on Radio 1.

I am aware that I'm pretty awesome, honestly. I'm doing well in my life, and at a party this weekend a group of us celebrated the genuine leaps ahead we've made in the last twelve months in our lives. One of the problems of being a graduate – and perhaps, simply being this age – is that occasionally I'm blown away by the achievements on my peers, and I feel a little behind. I know I'm not, and goodness knows I don't want to be a pop star or indeed a mother; still, it's a strange feeling.

Labels

One of the main problems of being a graduate type is that when you graduate and don't fall into your dream job (or indeed any job at all), it leads to a strangely existential crisis. You see, for years and years you were just 'a student'. Okay, not just a student, but the studying was essential to your understanding on yourself. Student discount, student politics, student feminism, student geek, student historian. They come with their own assumptions and values, which can often be negative but have positive connotations for the student themselves. My sister thinks students are lazy scum, but I rather like students.

So the crisis when you leave university and lose the label is something of a traumatic thing. Having been defined for so long by your full-time life, it's horrible having to be 'Second Accounts Assistant' or 'Retail Assistant' because quite simply it's not as snappy a title. Even those in their dream jobs are generally struggling a little, as many titles don't trip off the tongue. And 'job seeker' just doesn't sound good, even if it's not a negative thing in itself.

Tackling it is difficult. I take the self-deprecation route, myself, and go for 'Office Monkey' or 'Admin Bitch' depending on my mood. Or I lie at parties, which is morally wrong but I like to see what I can get away with. It was a moment of some distress when I got married and filled in a census in a twelve-month period and realised that I would, historically speaking, forever be tarred as 'Administration Clerk' for the rest of my life. Hell, I put down 'clerk' instead of 'assistant' just to sound a bit more historical. I wanted to put astronaut, but the council office were pretty insistent that was illegal. I wonder if on <i>Who Do You Think You Are 2150</i> some descendent will look at me and just think I was boring based on the records. I hope not.

My trick, these days, is to look at the other things in my life, and create a series of labels that aren't based around my job. Yes, I'm an office monkey, and that is a big part of my life. I'm also a writer. I'm a feminist. I'm a geek. I'm lots of things that are separate to me as a worker, and it's with that I keep my happiness and my sanity.

- -

Another label I can take on for the next fortnight is 'traveller'. Having managed to get my laptop back, I'm on the road as of Friday, finally getting to go on honeymoon. As I only have a year left to be classed as a 'young person' (another label!) according to Interrail standards, I'm off around Europe for two weeks with Mr DG and probably too much beer. As such, this is another hiatus announcement, but things should settle down when I'm back. Probably.

Quarter life crisis

I turn 25 in two days. I am trying very hard not to have a quarter life crisis about this. It feels like a tremendously big number, and my brain has spent the last few weeks punishing me for this. I've been finding myself ominously going through all the stuff I haven't done with my life; I haven't got that high-flying job, I haven't yet blossomed into a sinewy twenty-something with perfect skin and hair, I haven't got a cat, I've barely travelled in any meaningful sense, I haven't written a novel. Well, actually, I have done the last one, technically speaking, but I don't think that Lord of Rings fanfiction when your 15 counts. Also, I'll be spending my birthday at my parents so I can use their garden. The last birthday event at my parents? I was SEVENTEEN.

I've read a lot recently about turning 25 – what can I say, my generation really enjoys a bit of naval-gazing – and mostly it makes me feel wretched.

SO. Instead, I've been trying to make a list of all my achievements thus far that the seventeen year old me would have been proud of. Apparently this is the best way to think of it.

1. Passed my driving test and NOT KILLED ANYONE.

Now, there are people out there who wouldn't be impressed by this. These people did not see my driving lessons. Not only have I been driving for eight years, I have gone to and from Scotland more times than you can shake a stick at BYMYSELF. Once I drove a car from St Andrews to Cardiff. It wasn't my car. It was a borrowed car, and the seat didn't move far enough forward for me to touch the pedals the whole way down. And I still failed to kill anyone. SUCCESS.

2. I have a degree!

The title of the blog is a hint on that one, but it's easy to forget that having a degree is a really big achievement. To be honest, the seventeen year old me was just hoping she'd pass the AS-Levels.

3. I have managed to acquire a husband.

This is not an achievement, per se, mostly because in this one I've just been lucky and I don't think that 'being settled' is a universal achievement. Still, managing to organise a wedding is an achievement in itself.

4. I get to write sometimes.

Not that often. But I do get paid to write, both in my day to day job and outside of it. I manage to produce something for here on a semi-regular basis. I feel myself moving very, very slowly, to doing this professionally.

5. I have my own place.

Do I own it yet? No, of course not. But I've boomeranged and I've got out today. In today's world for people of my age, that's definitely an achievement.

6. I've managed to become a reasonably rounded human beings.

A true story, and one shared by many graduates: I was picked on at school. Horrendously. And once, Dad took me to one side, and he said: “Look. One day, you'll be driving past that lot in a car that you own, on the way to your nice job, and you'll see that lot queuing for a bus with hordes of kids, and they will look old. You'll have made something of yourself. You'll have won.”

He's not quite right yet. The nice job has yet to materialise. But occasionally I hear of the people who made my life hell, and, well, I seem to have improved since I was in high school. They haven't.

So fingers crossed, I will spend my birthday eating barbecue food, drinking copious amounts of red wine and feeling good about myself. Until the hangover, which is a totally different issue.

Long distance friendship

Long distance friendship starts being a problem in university, for most people. Even if you don't move too far away from home, chances are that some friends will do so, and visits may take place across the country, dossing on floors and seeing what other student unions look like. There's the beginning of a sense that your friendship network spreads across the country, sometimes even the world.

(And here's a fun story for you, young 'uns – we didn't have Facebook when we started university! It used to just be for students, and only permitted universities got to have it – St Andrews was possibly the first in the UK to be accredited, in my first year in 2005. I have no idea how we all kept up with each other beforehand.)

Most UK universities are hubs. You're more likely to meet someone from a different town than from the town you're actually studying in, excluding possibly the London universities. With an increasingly cosmopolitan outlook in most universities, you're also more likely to make international friends. Forced together into new circumstances, and possibly also a result of your age, you make firm friends. Then you all graduate, and chances are you all go to different parts of the country.

How do you maintain these friendships? Even worse, if you move home, and all of your friends have moved away, how do you keep a circle of friends at all?

I'm lucky in that I have a strong friend network from 'home', from 'university', and from that weird subsection of people who started as friends of friends and then became my own friends. That said, I have this topic of long distance friendship on the brain, firstly because Mr DG has a university friend staying this weekend who's travelled from Down South, and because it's my birthday next week. Parents have very kindly allowed me use of their garden and barbeque, and said I should invite friends if I want. (God, it's like being seventeen again.) So, I asked 'local' friends in an effort to overwhelm a house that I no longer live in and realised that there's about three people.

That was a shock.

The point is that I still have many friends, and I don't feel lonely. In fact, my social calender is currently fairly stuffed in terms of seeing various friends! It's just the nature of the friendship that changes. It's more difficult to 'just nip out for a drink', being that it involves hopping towns and checking diaries. However, it leads to more big social activities and more long weekends, chilling out and chatting.

It takes more effort, and I will be the first to admit that I am a terrible friend in terms of travelling to people – I need the odd weekend off, which explains why I am sat at home watching the trampolining at the Olympics and blogging rather than socialising with my husband and his friend, although we'll be eating together this evening.

The point is that the friendship stays strong. It's a pleasure to see people again, and I hope they're glad to see me! I'm lucky in that at least most people seem to be roughly between the lowlands of Scotland and the Watford gap, so not too big a distance considering, despite the issues with the rail network. It takes work, but then, that's true of most things worth doing. It's just a change, that's all – but then, it seems to be a change that most graduates are sharing these days.

(Long distance romantic relationships are a whole different kettle of fish. There just isn't enough blog space in the world to tackle that one, or at least not today!)

Summer holidays

Most, if not all, schools, colleges and universities have Broken Up For The Summer (excluding you poor buggars doing nursing, who I am aware don't get to have holidays either). Although the weather has yet to show much sign of improving, it's officially summer time. Ergo, it's time to talk about holidays.

I took all of one summer holiday while in university, three glorious weeks backpacking around Italy. (I came back with a deep and spiritual need for tea, mostly.) Other than that, I spent all of my holiday time working, and used to think I was a pretty hardcore and awesome human being, working all through my A-Levels and then my degree. Take your internships and stick 'em up your arse, I thought quietly, I'm going to spend the summer cleaning the toilets.

What I didn't realise was that a change is as good as a rest, and essentially nine months studying and working and then three months working and, er, mostly drinking was sort of like going on holiday. It was a change to the routine, and I was desperate to get back to uni by the end of it.

Now I have, in essence, four weeks of holiday a year. My employer chooses to give us the legal minimum of holidays, and being office based this includes our mandatory shut down periods which eats up a week of leave. As such, four weeks off a year. Last year I hoarded them like a miser in order to take off all of March, and coped with it reasonably well, I thought. This year I am struggling, somewhat.

A week off last week ended in a surprise trip to Venice (surprising to me, Mr DG and probably also Venice) which was wonderful, but the flatness on the return to work was fairly awful. After four days in I headed out again for a long weekend, and now I know that I'm in (including two six day weeks) until September, when I get two weeks off. Weirdly, I'm dreading that (or at least, the bit after it) the most, because then I only have four days of annual leave left to play with.

This is possibly the ultimate first world problem: middle-class Western girl whinges that she doesn't get enough paid time off. BOO HOO. I think, though, that I don't necessarily just want the time off, although a day off midweek here and there would be handy for doing stuff like 'going to the post office'. What I miss is the change from the routine, one long enough to make you grateful for the return to the routine. I'm also aware that I'm going to have the same amount of holidays pretty much for my entire working career.

Honestly, it's enough to make you go into teaching. Then I remember that if I did that I'd have to, you know, actually teach children, so perhaps I can cope without the holidays.

Graduation

I graduated three years ago today. I am generally reminded of the day I graduated by the yearly Michael Jackson obituaries, as I have a sort of magic touch for killing celebrities on important days on my life. (One day I will tell you about how I killed Whitney Houston.)

I loved graduating. Loved it. The actual ceremony was a bit odd, but the feeling of pride and achievement gently wafting through the room was beautiful. Mum cried, and Dad looked a bit gruff and pleased that finally someone in the family had made it through university. There was a garden party, and then the graduation ball was the next day.

There was an article in the Guardian a few days ago – Can you afford to go to your own graduation? This just makes me sad.

I had a unique set of circumstances when it came to my graduation. I was still in town, tickets to graduation were free for me and for two family members, and the garden party was also free for me and my two guests. The medieval history department also put on a significantly more boozy party, still free. There was an academic uniform that was mandatory, which for me was black skirt/trousers, nude tights, black shoes and white shirt. What I didn't own, I picked up at Primark fairly cheaply. I had to pay for the gown and cape. Looking at this article, I have to admit that I find it shocking that people are charged to attend their own graduation – you pay that much in fees for a reason, surely?

If you can afford to go to graduation, I sincerely urge people to do so. It's a decision you'll regret, otherwise. “It's all about the parents!” some people moan. Well, fine – let your parents celebrate your achievement! You graduate at 21, 22 – you're big enough and ugly enough to tell your parents to get stuffed if they're insisting on things you don't want. Getting a degree, despite graduate worries, despite the loans, despite the guff you get from people like me, is one hell of an achievement. Celebrate your awesomeness and embrace the stupid traditions. Graduation is the pay off for all of the hard work, and if you're lucky, there's a really good party afterwards.

In St Andrews, you get hit on the head with John Knox's trousers. Other universities have their own mad traditions. Come on, that's an opportunity you only get the once.

An unexpected sense of loss

That time has finally come for me. It happens earlier for most graduates, I appreciate, but the joy of the Scottish system is that you get to put stuff off for a bit longer.

The people who started university in the year I have graduated this week. I no longer have am active undergraduate link to the undergraduates of my old university.

I knew it had to happen eventually. One of the good things about being a part of societies, etc, is that you can pop in and still talk to people. It makes you feel connected, even as you get jobs and get married and do various grown-up things. You hear about things that are happening, rather than hearing about them through the alumni magazine, and pop along to visit, and good things like that.

Now, however, all friends from my time during university have all flown the nest. (St Andrews has an academic family system, so the metaphor is accurate.) Whilst I am very pleased and proud for them- graduating is SO MUCH FUN, more on that topic soon – I am also a little bereft and sad for myself, because now I have to accept that some of the anchoring to my student days has gone.

I don't know how common a sensation this is amongst graduates, mostly because I only noticed it myself a few weeks ago, but to all those currently graduating – look out for this one in three or four years, whenever the equivalent time comes up.

Oh well. There's always the Alumni Chronicle.

Strawberry jam on toast

We all have a story about the job that got away. As graduates start to come out of the universities, ashen-faced and stumbling into the merry-go-round from hell that is job-seeking and rounds and interviews, you find yourself getting a little attached to The Job Of Your Dreams.

Then, as a rule, it rejects you.

Living with my parents again, and doing a part-time job in order to have a little disposable income and keep a little self-esteem, I applied for Jobs I Wanted To Do. Unfortunately, these jobs very rarely felt the same towards me. Getting an interview would be INSANELY EXCITING! Except it would be a telephone interview, or a recruitment agency looking to exploit graduates to swell their books. Look out for them, they're sharks.

I applied for a graduate scheme and was surprised on my lunch break by a telephone interview, which ended up taking place surreptitiously in the kitchen of my job. She enthused about my cover letter, my experience. A day later I was invited to an interview in London, which I truly tripped off for, staying overnight in a Richard Curtis film with My Successful Godfather in London.

I left his beautiful Islington house to catch the Tube, wearing a business suit and using an Oyster card, and found myself lured into fitting in with this world, as I emerged from the train into a world with the Gherkin towering over it, and people flitting around drinking coffee and clutching free newspapers. Do you know how hypnotic that is, to someone who spent four years being told that this was her destiny, and instead folded clothes in a shopping centre? You don't see the poverty that you know is lurking just around the corner, you don't smell the pollution or sense the stress – the glamour just temporarily oozes out, mixing with the nerves of the interview to make a heady cocktail of desire and hopes.

I spent the day in an office block overlooking the river, completing tasks and an exam, and got chatty with my fellow applicants. There were sixteen of us, and four jobs going. There were only three people for my stream – good odds, by my reckoning. They told us that over 3,000 had initially applied. As I left, and headed back on the train, I hoped and prayed I had the job. I felt good, positive. I wanted that job more than burning. I knew it would be hard, but it would work. They told us we'd know in a week.

By 5pm a week later, I had heard nothing. At all.

Two days later, I sent in an e-mail querying if they'd had the time to make a decision,and I was told they'd tell me soon. Three days later, in the middle of a shift at work, they did. I hadn't got it. No, there wasn't any real feedback – I was just as good as the other candidate, but they'd decided to go for him instead. I thanked them for the time, went back to work, and managed not to cry all day. I went to to a yoga class that night, and half way through just started bawling like a child. It wasn't my best possible moment. My parents were working late that night, I remember, and they came home to me snuffling on the sofa and hugging a bottle of wine and tearfully telling them there'd been a terrible mistake and I was stupid and shouldn't be allowed out of the house again ever.

The next day I got another call for an interview, for a different company. My mood improved exponentially, and people kept on telling me this was proof I was awesome. Duly I went for the interview, and worked out that by the end of the thing that I might well swing this one, but it wasn't a job I desperately wanted. The move to Scotland would have been worth it, but the job would have been crap. I was cool with not getting it, I thought. I would get more interviews, I thought.

I didn't get the job, which I still say is for the best. I was cool with it when I got the phonecall. I continued with my day. I got home from work. I put some toast on, planning to go to the gym for a few hours but needed a snack before I went. I buttered the toast, and put on a generous amount of strawberry jam. Mum came into the kitchen. “Did you get it?” she breathlessly asked me as I took a bite of the toast.

“Oh, Mum,” I said, and then cried all over her. I still can't eat strawberry jam.

–

I may sound like a drama queen here, but everyone has one of these stories. Looking for work is soul-destroying, as you analyse yourself, open yourself for judgement, and more often than not come up negative. I tell this story occasionally, and people always pipe up with their own equivalent. “I didn't get into the Civil Service scheme because I DRANK WATER TOO NOISILY,” a friend will always indignantly tell me. As many graduates try head into the world of work, hopefully things will fall into place for people and prospective interviewees won't have to feel like this, but I think its inevitable, sometimes.

I'm going to try and post in the next few weeks some more practical tips on job-hunting for the new graduate, and how to dodge through the scams that exist out there, but with the econmoy officially in double-dip recession I felt like I had to write the bad stuff first, before getting to the positive stuff. There is positive stuff, though. I promise.

Work appropriate clothing vs the zombie apocalypse

Work appropriate clothing is a funny thing.

I am very pleased that my life no longer involves uniforms, staff clothing allowances, or the need to wear clothes that you don't mind if bleach splashes against it. This may not sound like much to you, but it's important to hold onto the little things when it comes to a new job.

There are probably jobs out there where you can wear exactly what you want 24/7, but I don't have one of them. This is mostly because on a day to day basis I have been known to wear naught but pajamas, or a replica Star Trek uniform. Both of these are probably not great for my slightly customer-facing role. Besides, it's nice to have a 'work' side to the wardrobe. It means that I don't have to think too much about what I'm going to wear that day, know that I look appropriate for my role, and also be reasonably comfortable. The culture of my office is one less of smart-casual and more of smart-comfortable, simply because there is a manufacturing element to the business I work for and sometimes you need to head into an industrial area and sensible shoes and high-visibility jackets are the order of the day.

See that woman up there? That's what I assumed I would be wearing in my graduate life. Instead it might well be a blouse like that, but with jeans, or smart trousers with a jumper. Still, I keep on thinking that one day I will be a Professional. My interview suit – jacket and trousers and yes, it's from Marks and Spencer – hangs forlornly in my wardrobe, and the other day I went mad in Primark and bought a pencil skirt.

Imagine, then, my delight, when I found myself selecting for a Very Important Meeting outside of the office. Okay, not that delighted, but still – I could wear my new skirt! On the morning of the meeting I shuffled myself into skirt, heels and strode out into the morning before promptly failing to get into my car with any dignity of grace. This experience continued throughout the day, particularly when I attempted to get up stairs. Hilarity ensued for my colleagues. Less so for me. A pencil skirt, for those not in the know, creates a sleek silhouette, with a higher waistline and lower hemline, with a tightening towards the knees. In practical terms, it means you can't move particularly fast.

One day I would still like to have a role where I get to wear Office Clothes, but I think I need more practice at the business suit thing. Apart from anything else, I always feel it's important to be able to run away as fast as possible when the zombie apocalypse comes and the only way I would have been doing that would have been to do that would have been to strip first, which frankly no one needs to see at the end of the world.

In conclusion: business suits take a ridiculous amount of practice. Who knew?

(On the bright side, the meeting went very well and I only fell over once in the car park. Success!)

Use of space

I found myself wondering the other night what architects from the past would think of our building uses these days. I live in a town full of big old late Victorian and Edwardian houses, too small for the aristocracy but still very large for the newly aspirant middle class. High ceilings, several floors, and a reasonable amount of outdoors space.

They would have been family homes, I think. Family in the pre-war sense; husband and wife, several children, spinster aunts, housemaids, governesses, whatever else was needed for a suitably genteel house. Most houses in that period would have kept servants – it was a very common thing to do, mostly because of the sheer amount of work involved in keeping such a big place running. Think Mary Poppins, if you will.

Nowadays very few of the houses are still run like that. A large chunk of them have been converted into nursing homes, charming buildings but a buggar to run on practical terms – staircases simply can't be widened all that much. Perhaps these are closest to the original purposes, although the staff come and go, rather than live in. People thrown together and living together in essentially the same household, while the staff snatch meals in basements with leftovers. (Yes, that last part really is personal experience.)

Some of the houses still have families in, of course. They don't have extended families – granny flats, and perhaps a cleaner and a gardener, but just one family. These days they're even more likely to just be an elderly couple rattling around together in a few rooms. Although I have nothing but sympathy for people who wish to stay in their own homes, I do sometimes think that the architect would bite through his drawing pencil when looking at this use of the space – empty, unused, and criminally helping to keep house prices inflated while young aspirant families shrink into smaller and smaller buildings.

What about where I live? The building I live in was (apparently) built in 1898, so still just about Victorian. What must have been astonishingly beautiful interiors have been ripped out and replaced by some quite shonky flats with thin walls and ceilings, and given the flat above us used to be a cannabis farm then probably quite severely changed. The buildings around us are all newer buildings – I suspect we live in the oldest on this side of the street. I think that maybe the architect would be unhappy as we live in our segregated areas, nodding on the stairways and only banding together to complain en masse about some difficult neighbours. (This may make us sound monstrous, but it wasn't your front door they were fighting with drug dealers in front of and on a few cases banging against it. Fading gentility, sometimes very faded, is the name of the game in this town.)

And yet, the other night, I wondered if maybe that was what he would have wanted. We're all very different people here, but we all constantly encroach on each other's spaces. There are at least three different nationalities represented in this buildings, with a wide variety of jobs, but we all walk up the same stairs and through our same front doors. I know the names of three of the four people living upstairs from the shouting – the fourth appears to be called 'Mummy' and very little else. We don't talk, and frankly I don't want to, but we all essentially share a house and we make it still work together.

So I wonder what the architects would make of the houses in this town today, and the way we use space as a community.

Graduate Myth #12: You Have To Be Friends With All Of Your Co-Workers

If you work full time, you will spend most of your awake time with your co-workers. With any luck you spend more quality time with friends and family, but the unmitigating horror of full-time work is that you have to be BFFs with all of your colleagues otherwise you are a failure at social interaction.

This is... not exactly a myth. There is, like the best kinds of myth, an element of truth to it. And one I shall tread around carefully for the sake of any old or current colleagues who might stumble on this.

Working full-time does indeed mean that you will be spending most of your awake time with these people. I am firmly of the belief that this doesn't immediately translate to you having to be best buddies with your work colleagues. I am not best buddies with my work colleagues, and whilst we go on occasional work nights out, I don't want to go on holiday with them, or have lunch with them, or go out every week with them. Sorry, guys. I've had colleagues in the past, in this job and in previous jobs, who I've gone on to be real friends with, and catch up with when I can. Just because I'm not BFFs with my current colleagues, though, doesn't mean that I don't respect them, enjoy talking to them, and don't mind the odd after-work drink.

Work colleagues are, in many respects, a microcosm of real society. Some of them are scum, some of them are nice people, a small fraction of them you'll become real friends with. My first job, in Homebase aged 16, was filled with horrible human beings who didn't talk to me. Ever. The managers bitched about me behind my back. It was delightful, as you can guess, and put me off shop work for years afterwards. That said, the job I look back on with most fondness is the shop job I had in university. I'm not naming it as the company is still on my CV for reference purposes, but it had the best group of staff ever, and I miss them all desperately.

That said: one of my ex-colleagues in my current job hated me. Really, fully, truly despised me. Put in complaints about my working standards (occasionally based on truth, on more than a few occasions completely fabricated), wouldn't look me in the eye, nothing. It was weird, and unpleasant, and I'm not sad she left. (Or that I gatecrashed her leaving do, which I naturally hadn't been invited to. Petty but hilarious.) Then again, it was only one person, and the rest of my colleagues were very supportive over it.

Don't let one person force you out. However, if you hate – and I do mean completely loathe – all of your colleagues, then to be honest it's not the job for you. Jobs, logically, attract roughly similar people, and there should be at least a few bits and bobs in common, enough to see through the day and the odd chat over the kettle. If all you do is sit at your desk and plot the deaths of those around you, then that should dictate a culture clash high enough for you to start seeking new employment – fast. Put it this way. Did you get on with every single person on your course at university? Of course not. But you could still be in a room with them. That's what counts.

FULL DISCLAIMER: Obviously if you are a current or ex-colleague reading this, I clearly don't hate you. No, not even you, B, who I talked about above. Your loathing was completely one way.

Unless you worked at a very particular Homebase around 2003 and 2004, then I probably hate your soul. So you know.