Every time I start to feel positive about my current financial/social/life situation something drags me right back down again.
For example today was gaining knowledge of the £451 commute from Reading to London this month, for my one month, minimum wage (minimum wage is not a living wage, but that’s a topic for another post) internship. I can’t live in London, because I can’t afford it. But I can’t save to live there because I’m spending half my pay check travelling there and it’s not like my only monthly expenses are travel. Ergo, I have no money.
I would move away to another city but it’s not like I can afford that either and career wise, literally every job I even remotely want to do/is worth doing in the long-run is in London. [Ie, not working in a shop or being a receptionist in a insurance company or something]. I will also know absolutely no one at all in another city. Also, I have no potential jobs in said hypothetical cities and even if I did, they’re too far to commute to from Reading. So I can’t even work and save and move out. And even if they were closer, I’d most likely be blowing all my dollah on extortionate peak time rail tickets that I won’t be able to save anything anyway.
I can’t get a job because I don’t have experience. But it’s shit hard to get experience because A) it’s hard to get any job at all, there’s so much competition, B) Most experience will be unpaid/voluntary shit and naturally all in London and quite frankly it’s not like that monthly train pass is going to pay for itself.
And staying in Reading is physically the most viable option (well, really the only one) but mentally, I’m soon gonna have some total epic breakdown (again) because I’m SO sick of being here. I want somewhere with personality and culture and a feeling of potential. In Reading I just feel like everything is stagnant and banal.
I know life is not easy and I shouldn’t expect things to just fall into my lap but it’s just so exhausting trying to navigate yourself around a society that is literally stacking everything against you, piece by piece. I hate the way we’re told by authorities that we should go to uni and get a great education and get a job when really all you get is a ridiculous amount of debt that you can’t pay off because you can’t get a job because despite the degree you’ve been told to get, you haven’t got any experience. So you try to get experience but if your lucky enough to even get offered the gig, you can’t afford to physically go there to get the experience because they won’t pay you, so essentially you’d be paying to work for them for free. But money doesn’t grow on trees so that option isn’t even possible even if you were willing. So really, I should have not bothered with higher education, blasted a low paying job for a while, stayed with my rents, saved up, done some unpaid voluntary work, got enough experience for a real job, moved out, not got thousands of pounds into debt and not started my early twenties with this constant feeling of hopelessness and ill-foreboding. But I didn’t because at school it’s basically ‘GO TO UNI OR YOU WILL NEVER GET A DECENT JOB. EVER.’
And now it’s all ‘CANT HIRE YOU BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO EXPERIENCE DOING THIS JOB. GO GET SAID EXPERIENCE THAT I’VE DECIDED THERE IS NO WAY YOU GOT AT UNI.’
I am now literally at my wits end and I don’t know what to do. It would help massively if I could see any light at the end of the tunnel but I genuinely can’t at all. The cycle is seemingly endless.
6 MONTHS AND COUNTING IN GRADUATE DYSTOPIA.
I am literally so ready for the apocalypse, I don’t even care anymore.
Why the eff did I have to graduate with a 2:2 in a recession? It’s not making me feel any better about applying for jobs when I’m constantly being told by the media that 136556846534557 other graduates are applying from the same positions, most of whom have 2:1’s.
Also, why are all jobs in sales?!
I DON’T WANT TO SELL PEOPLE CRAP. I WANT TO MAKE BEAUTIFUL THINGS WITH PRETTY COLOURS AND AWESOME DESIGNS THAT MAKE PEOPLE HAPPY AND MAKE ME HAPPY AND ARE JUST GENERALLY A MILLION TIMES HAPPIER THAN I AM NOW.
ffs.
So it’s all a pretty emosh time in the land that is my head and quite frankly, I really wish the internal frown would turn upside down so I could stand a chance of actually enjoying my final week or so of university life- rather than wanting to burst into tears at any given second.
Thing is, I’ve got attached.
I’ve got attached to my house mates, Oxford, the partying and even the architecture studio- people I love and know so well, those I don’t and those I probably shouldn’t.I’ve got attached to all the things that have made this mental 3 year dream great (and even what’s made it shit) and it’s really hard to let it go. I feel like I’m going backwards.
My home town will be the same as it was three years ago which is fine but I don’t know if I can handle that because I’ve changed. A lot. I know so many people who I’ll probably never see again, and others that although they’ll still be in my life, so much less so. It’s insane, this feeling, finally letting yourself realise that it’s all over and knowing you can’t change it although that’s the one single thing you want to do- you need to do.
I am completely fucking lost.
3rd year is over
final hand in tomorrow and my relationship with architecture is no more
3 years of hate and now I’m genuinely sad.
and tired.
Didn’t get to sleep until half 8 this morning. I became a crazy lady.
