‘What Next’: A Personal Account From a Final Year Student

I have spent most of my life planning for what comes next. During GCSE’s, I was planning for my A-Levels, during my A-Levels I was planning for university. As I am an organiser through and through, I have never coped well with spontaneity and I find that I can barely go out to dinner without stalking the restaurant’s menu beforehand.

However, I have discovered that graduating university and moving into the workforce has been a lot trickier to control than choosing the university course I wanted to do. It’s a difficult choice at the best of times, let alone when you throw Covid-19 into the mix – it’s a recipe for disaster.

I had always planned on travelling after university but due to the pandemic, a lot of my globe-trotting dreams were put on hold. This is when I decided I would try applying for jobs.

The Hunt for a Job

Most of my final year of university has been spent slaving over my computer screen, applying for graduate schemes and internships, only to be faced with radio silence. I have tried large multinationals, small scale local businesses, and even remote positions for overseas companies, but for some reason, no one wanted to take on a graduate like me.

“I lost more and more confidence”

As an overachiever, these rejections hit me extremely hard and I saw them as an omen for what my post-university life would be like. I couldn’t rid myself of visions of me living with my mother and still applying for these unpaid roles at age 28 and to be perfectly honest, I started to spiral.

I would spend hours of my free time scrolling LinkedIn for opportunities that simply weren’t there. I went to sleep considering the different industries that I would be willing to work in and how I could manipulate my CV to fit these roles. As I saw increasing numbers of my friends receiving job offers or being accepted onto master’s courses, I lost more and more confidence.

A Well-Deserved Break

Eventually, I just couldn’t look anymore and I decided to take a well-deserved break.

It was during this break that I remembered my original dream of living abroad. It had been swept under the rug for so long that I think I forgot about it. I thought to myself, why am I wasting my time applying for jobs that I don’t really want, when I could try pursuing a new route to my travelling aspirations?

This is when I started to do research into BUNAC, a travel agency who help young people find work abroad and apply for visas. During the pandemic, I had been lucky enough to keep my job as a barista and consequently, had saved up enough money to invest in the programme.

So, I did it!

Canada Here I come

A few hundred pounds and A LOT of paperwork later, I had successfully completed an interview! I was then offered a job in a Canadian ski resort at a café! Whilst this may not have been the journalistic experience I had been chasing, it meant that I could apply for a Canadian visa.

Fast forward to today and I am almost at the end of my application process and looking to move to Canada in November! Whilst a lot of this is still dependent on the conditions of Covid-19, I feel that there is a lot more hope than there was six months ago.

There is Always a Light at the End of the Tunnel

During the chaos of both the pandemic and my final year of university, I became lost in what I thought I should be doing as opposed to what I truly wanted to do. I was hearing left and right that I should start my career young to get ahead, or that journalism is such a competitive industry that I need every ounce of experience I could get.

I saw my friends pursuing office roles and believed that I was going to get left behind if I didn’t follow suit. But this isn’t the case.

“after all, you are the one in the driver’s seat”

If the pandemic has taught me anything, it is that life is unpredictable and planning does not always work. Just because I plan out the next 10 years of my future, doesn’t mean that it will unfold this way and chances are it won’t. I think I am starting to accept that, and I hope that I can take this perspective with me to Canada.

If you find yourself in a similar situation to me, whether that is this year, or next, or even in five years’ time, I would strongly encourage you to put your blinkers on. Don’t compare your life journey to that of others and don’t let yourself be placed on a path that is taking you in the wrong direction.

After all, you are the one in the driver’s seat.

Lucy Tombs

Featured image courtesy of Josefa nDiaz on Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image license can be found here.