Rantings of a Graduate... Again!

Ever feel like your life is on pause? Or, at least, on slow mo? I do at the moment. I got this feeling while I was at uni. I felt like I wasn’t going anywhere in my life, that it had just stopped. The only thing that kept me going, was the notion (that was being forced into my brain everyday) that when I graduate, I will get some really great job, a job that I can make a career out of, and then the brakes of life would have been lifted and I would be rolling along nice and smoothly.

How wrong was I?

My life, is once again, and pretty much still is, stuck. The handbrake is firmly up, and it is stopping me from going anywhere. My final exam was in May. I got a job in August. I graduated in December. I’m still here at this same job. Job. That’s all it is. Nothing more, nothing less. I can’t make a career out of it, and I’m getting a little more minimum wage. People who work on my desk are mainly school leavers. You know what that implies – a degree is not needed for this job.

I know, I always moan about the situation I am in, and I apologise if I seem to be ungrateful. I am. It’s just that every day I wake up, disappointed that I went to university, got a degree in psychology, and I am not using it. I am trying, so hard to make it count. But I’m not getting anywhere. I’ve had a few interviews for some really great companies. The Civil Service, Penguin, Arup, J O Hasbro Investments. All amazing companies, in amazing London, with amazing prospects. But every bloody time, I get rejected, with the same “lack of experience” response, which is a load of crap, because I have more than enough to meet the job spec and beyond. I interview great apparently. Well, I should hope so, as I have had enough practice.
Like I said, I know I go on and on about it. But I really want to put across to whoever is reading out there, how hard it is to make something of yourself in life, with a degree. How hard it is to graduate in a country where there are thousands of graduates, and try and find a job to make the degree worthwhile. Graduate jobs have now changed their criteria from last year. 

 

Applying for the same schemes this year as I did last year, and they now ask that the candidate has over 330 UCAS points (AAB in A levels). This proves in itself just how unvalued the degree is these days, because so many people have one. As well as having a degree, you need good A levels. Something that I don’t have, and something that is absolutely pointless, because I know people who messed around in college, and got awful grades, but wanted to make something of themselves, so that managed to go to uni and get an amazing degree. I received 3 B’s at A levels, and a 2:1 degree. You would have thought that this was good enough? Apparently not.  

I want to do something with my life. I want a career. I want a job where I can utilize my degree.

Anyone out there that can help me?!

Any advice would be welcome!

A Little Me

Name: Jenni Jones
Birth-day: 12/6/89
Basics: I have a degree in Psychology (2.1 with honours!) a job, a fiancé, a loving family, great friends and a brother (I know he is family...but he is not very loving!).

I love to read. I have a whole lot of books to get through by Christmas!
I love to travel. My aim is to travel most of the globe, but I want to start of small (ish), and just travel around the UK. I want to visit as many different – interesting- places as I can.
I love to scrapbook. I haven’t done this for a while, as I have been busy!
I love photography. I am not a master at it. I am a beginner. I love looking at amazing photos of the world, and unusual photos of everyday things. I really want to be able to learn how to take amazing arty photos!

This blog will simply follow me as I go about my daily business. I guess I wanted its aim to give people an insight into the life of a 20 something woman, and how boring or exiting it can be!
I aim to update it daily, and fill it with my thoughts, feelings, what I did the previous evening, what I am planning on doing, photos, problems and other little bits and pieces of my little life.

A little taster....
I am currently in a job that is more suitable for people who have just left school. It certainly does not require a degree! I want to get into the human resource career, or occupational psychology.
It seems that the only way to do this is to do what every other graduate is doing. Applying for hundreds of menial jobs a week, that are only remotely related to their area of interest; or they are applying for hundreds of graduate schemes that are related to their subject choice. Both of these, as from experience, are very hard, tedious and soul destroying, as 99% of the time, I don’t hear from anyone, or I am rejected. Since when did having a degree make it impossible to find a job?
The current system we have here in the UK is appalling and it needs to be stopped.
Anyway, I will end this here before I end up writing reams and reams of moaning! I may end up doing it across a few blogs!

So that’s a little bit of me!!
Stay tuned for more this week!
 

http://contentnotebooki.blogspot.com/

*Warning* Major Opinionated Rant Below....

Hello, .... . I probably say this about, oooh I don’t know, 50 odd times a day? And after nearly a year of saying it.. I’m getting a little bored of it. Bored of saying the same thing, doing the same thing and even getting frustrated over the same thing, day in, day out! It’s shame really. The place itself is great, my work colleagues are fab, (with a few exceptions) and it’s only a 10minute walk from where I live. Perfect. It’s just that, the job itself is so monotonous and sooo very easy.  There are no challenges; therefore, there is no job satisfaction.  I am a graduate, as are a few other girls here. And we are stuck in a job that a school leaver can do. Somehow I don’t see that that was how the further education system was meant to work. (I wasn’t belittling those without degrees on any level, I was simply saying, what is the point of having a degree, if the only jobs that we can get are those that require GSCE’s.)
The further education system is total joke anyway. Throughout GCSE’s and A levels, we are constantly bombarded that a “degree is the most important thing you can get in life; a degree will open doors; a degree will put you in a job with a 22k job”. And so go forth many, many, many students, including myself, onto university, getting almost £15k in debt, with the belief that this amazing qualification will put them ahead of everyone else who left school at 16 and 18. 3 years later, imagine my (and many others’ I’m sure) disheartenment when I find out, that after applying to over 150 degree orientated jobs, many of which were graduate jobs, that I got nothing. Why? Because I did not have any experience. What. A. Joke. What is the point, in getting a stupid degree, when all employers look for is experience. No one, throughout my educational life, told me experience was just as important as (if not more) a degree. I wish I had known this before I chose to go to university. I am stuck, in what feels like, a life, way behind those of my peers who left school at 16, and are managers and earning good money.
So, to end this bitter complaint, I say, to any possible readers out there who are considering going to university, think about it before you do. If you are going for the experience, then great, go and live! But if you’re going for an education and “better job possibilities”, then maybe you shouldn’t bother, or, be prepared to do a masters and maybe even a doctorate, to actually get a better job.

Rant over.... for now!