Swiv's Idea of a University
Created | Updated Oct 22, 2003
This week I'm much more relaxed about life generally. It might be the after effects of a day spent in Glasgow, or it might be that I've decided that I no longer care if I'm unemployed at the end of the year, I'm fed up of trundling round looking into jobs that, frankly, would put me in danger of slitting my wrists within three months.
Actually the two go together quite well. I ostensibly went to Glasgow for the Scottish Graduate Careers fayre at the SECC. I came back with toastie new gloves, hat and scarf, and some free chocolate from the Kraft stand at the fayre. It made two careers fayres in under a week - as my own, beloved, careers service organised one in St Andrews last Friday.
Basically, these things are heaven if you want to go into management, consulting, engineering, business or marketing. Which frankly I don't. In fact, I'm not sure I even know what half those jobs would entail me actually DOING.
It also seems that you're expected to about all the companies who show up to hawk themselves at these things. Now I know about the BBC (odd that...), and the armed forces, I know what teachers do, I've even heard of Kraft foods, and GHCQ interests me (and still there wasn't much point in talking to them, because they couldn't tell me much I hadn't found out from looking at their website, but they were good for some funky freebies). But on things like Enterprise-Rent-A-Car, ACCA, Accenture and so on, my mind was blank, and their little displays behind their stands weren't particularly enlightening.
So I wandered around for a little bit, collecting goodies: I have a squeezy green car for when I get stressed, I have a cool pen that has a little blue light in it - thank you GHCQ, from whom I also collected a mug and a disposable camera, and who were generally lovely - I have chocolate and a cow ears headband from Kraft, I have a Scottish Executive pen and eraser, and I have a bouncy ball that flashes a red light from AON (who they?), so I didn't come out of it too badly.
Instead, I have decided to apply for about the three things I've found that I'm interested in that have graduate recruitment schemes, and then forget about it. A friend of mine graduates from Vet school in 2005, and she wants to go travelling, I'll get a nice job in the Cornish tourist industry for a year, and then join her.
There has been a distinct theme to this week: 'It's just not worth it'. I'd rather enjoy my final year than focus on finding a job, and as for the essays! Well, I got through last week's writers block - incredibly bad for my health, studying Ancient History - and finished the essay. I doubt it's my finest hour, but we'll see when the Professor has marked it.
But frankly, getting a first is not worth the stress. So I made a resolution - if I'm in the library from 9:30 to six, I blatantly do not need to work till ten in the evening, I'm going to go to the cinema. And if I start to worry about not having done enough work for my next essay: on what we can learn from the historical novel in the first half of the twentieth century, then I'm going to the beach to build sandcastles.
Of course this might all change if I get a good mark for that Ancient History trauma, but I have friends on the alert to drag me away from books that aren't novels. So it's all going to work.
