Degrees of Desperation

It was only with the additional persuasion of sitting down and reading Chris Owen's facebook post that I finally decided to write this long-overdue blog. I finished university in July, and have to admit that I was initially in no major rush to find work. I was pleased with myself, though undeservedly I knew. To have done so little work and yet still achieved a degree that would supposedly impress employers was surely an achievement in itself. I therefore felt a bittersweet sense of accomplishment as I received my certificate then boarded a train for Suffolk.

Upon arrival, my better half and I decided that seeing as he was working in a local town, it would make the most sense for me to work there also. Having agreed this strategy I dispersed my CV amongst the local job agencies in the hope that something - anything really - would come up.

After a month it was becoming uncomfortably obvious that this was not going to be as easy as I had anticipated. I had been fooled by my own arrogance into believing that my 3 year degree in English actually had some value in the world, and I was just beginning to come around to the conclusion that maybe, actually, it wasn't. Employers didn't want fresh graduates out of university with barely a day's worth of real work experience. They wanted people with 1-2 full years of experience in "a similar role", despite only offering a £15,000 salary. They wanted Quark and Adobe and half a dozen other programs that I've never even had access to. They wanted a full drivers license.

The worst part is that these aren't even good jobs. These aren't jobs that anyone who had better options would take, they are jobs so mundane that not stringing yourself up in the stationary cupboard at the end of week one is considered an achievement. The people who work there are more stupid than you are, and are only more senior and more wealthy than you are because they dropped out earlier so they have those extra years of experience.

It's unbelievable that I could have reached the ripe old age of 25 and still not feel as though I am qualified to do anything. If someone had asked me when I was 15 what I would be doing in 10 years times, first of all I would have said "I can hardly imagine that far ahead" and then I might have hazarded a guess that I would have achieved 3 basic goals. 1) Have a job, 2) Have a house, 3) Get married. I have achieved none of these things, which makes turning 25 the most painful birthday I have experienced in some time.

Nobody told me that English was a waste of time, though with hindsight I look back and realise that it was obvious. People will tell you all sorts of things to get you into the university system. "Just do a subject you love" they'll say, "It's a great experience" and so forth. Now, I'm not saying I didn't enjoy university, but I spent a LOT of money over the course of the last 7 (yes, 7) years. To get to the end of it with a Bachelors that essentially only tells employers that I read some books and wrote about them is thoroughly depressing. Worst still is the fact that everybody these days thinks they're a critic, everyone supposedly has a meaningful opinion about everything, and everyone (I am told) has a book inside them. Okay, so if deep down we're all writers and getting a qualification that tells people you can read isn't necessarily a good use of time and money, then WHY do these degrees exist at all? Or is it just for the sensationally rich, and somebody neglected to tell me that unless I had been born into money, humanities was a fat waste of time?

Just make a comparison; Law, for example. Yes you read a lot of books, learn things, write about them. It's just another essay subject, right? No, because not only do you read things, you are trained to enter a profession. Same with Psychology. A subject like maths is almost always welcome, because having maths is like having a badge that says "I am smarter than everyone else, because I understand how numbers work". It's elitest is what it is. Sciences, likewise, are a sign that you're the brightest and best, but humanities? No. No, because EVERYONE can read a book, and because we're all entitled to our opinions, EVERYONE can write an essay. We should all have an English degree by dint of the fact that we're all English, surely?

What started out as a reasoned debate has turned into a rant, maybe because I'm so angry and disappointed. I'm angry because the economy has decided to fall apart just when I needed it to hang together, and it hasn't done that for years, and it quite simply isn't fair. The government is throwing tax payers' money at greedy bankers in order to fix a problem that they caused, and according to people I've spoken to, apparently this is the only thing to be done, which just makes me want to throw an enormous bitch fit. Fat, greedy bastards with six figure salaries are walking away from this back to their sports cars and their holiday villas in foreign climes until it all "blows over" whereas I have to return to my parents' house to weather out the storm and feel like a worthless sponger, while job agencies tell me unhelpful things like "employers will like it less if you have big gaps in your CV" while simultaneously being incapable of finding even the most basic work.