Cara Rogers
It’s back to school, work, and grad scheme season. But for those of us who, for the first time in a long time, don’t have a plan for the next phase of our lives, it’s also major graduate anxiety season.
All around me my peers are securing their dream jobs, training contracts, and graduate schemes. I’m thrilled for them of course, but there’s also a nagging voice in the back of my head berating me for having not yet reached the same successes – the curse of graduate job anxiety.
After finishing my studies in June, I hoped to find work by my July graduation. When that hadn’t happened, I set my next goal: to find work by the end of summer. It’s now almost September, and I’m still sending out applications without any success.
“Post-university life is certainly not always the dream we were sold.”
I feel anxiety every day over whether, when, and where I will find work. It feels as though the clock is ticking, I’m putting in the work to be able to reach my goals, but nothing is coming of it. I’m lucky enough to have savings, and to be able to live with my parents, but not everyone in my position is. Post-university life is certainly not always the dream we were sold.
At times I get moments of clarity, where I remind myself that I have plenty of time to find my ‘dream’ job. I tell myself that I’m only 22-years-old and that it’s okay to take things at a different pace from those around me. But I also have near-constant anxiety about my future, which I’m certain I’m not alone in feeling.
A Cultural Pressure
“So, how’s the job hunt going?” – dreaded words for an unemployed graduate to hear (yet words we hear very often). It’s well-meaning, but it’s an unintentional and very frequent reminder that I’m flagging in terms of where I’m ‘supposed’ to be at this stage. There are only so many ways I can tell my friends and family that, no, despite the degree which everyone said would open doors, I haven’t secured a job yet. After a while, the classic “no, nothing yet, but I’m still searching!” starts to feel embarrassing.
“The societal story we tell of university is one where we graduate and immediately secure our ‘dream’ jobs.”
As well as frequent probing from friends and family, social media constantly fuels my graduate job anxiety; the graduate social media landscape is a whirlwind of achievement and success. My feed is filled with people my age sharing their latest publications (for the record: if I ever post a story I’ve had published, just know that plenty of rejected pitches came before it), in a way that has me comparing my successes to theirs, wondering why I haven’t achieved what they have.
These anxieties aren’t anybody’s fault – it’s natural for those around me to be curious about my progress, and for social media users to want to share theirs. I don’t begrudge anyone these updates, and I often participate in them myself.
Rather than individual people, this graduate job anxiety is fuelled by a very career and goals-driven culture. The societal story we tell of university is one where we graduate and immediately secure our ‘dream’ jobs, but this isn’t always the reality. Work, productivity, and success are all values placed on a pedestal – we are told that we should chase our career dreams and make them happen no matter what. Deviance from a pre-prepared pathway of university straight into our ideal job is frowned upon, a sign that we’ve failed.
The Reality
Unfortunately, this isn’t how real life always works. We don’t always know what we want to do straight after graduating, we might need to work in a position that isn’t our ‘dream’ job to save money for our future, or just to get by. We might even be seeking some down-time away from career-focused activities, or we might simply be unsuccessful in our job efforts, leaving us temporarily unemployed.
Studies conducted in 2018/2019 by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) showed that only 56% of UK graduates were in full-time employment 15 months after graduating. Research conducted by a leading careers exploration website in 2015 also showed that 44% of undergraduates didn’t know the industry they wanted to work in once they graduated. But the norms and values of graduate career discourse don’t always acknowledge or allow for these statistics and deviations from the imagined graduate routes. Perhaps if this reality was more widely known, more graduates would feel better about their career anxieties.
What Needs to Change?
Anxiety about career prospects isn’t the most pressing issue we face in the 21st century. Regardless, the discourses which lead to these anxieties are in many ways foundational to the structuring of society and are worth engaging with and challenging when they cause harm.
“We need to learn to be comfortable moving at our pace, standing our ground, and having faith in ourselves”
We should encourage discursive shifts in the realm of graduate career talk – remembering that not everyone works on the same timeline and schedule, not everyone has the means to launch into their ‘dream’ job immediately after graduation, and that work is not the ultimate marker of success.
There’s also a need for a change within ourselves. My rising job anxiety has as much to do with my own attitudes as it does the cultural norms around me. We need to learn to be comfortable moving at our pace, standing our ground, and having faith in ourselves, even if it feels like everyone around us is far ahead of us.
Graduate job anxiety is pervasive and complex, but we can challenge the norms and attitudes that bring it into existence, starting within ourselves.
Featured image courtesy of Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image license found here.
cararogers
Cara is a freelance lifestyle and culture writer based in Manchester. When she's not writing opinion pieces about pop culture or the latest social media trends, she's trying out new veggie recipes and listening to podcasts.