When I started my first year of University I had no idea whether I wanted (or needed) a job. I’d never had a payslip greater then £800, as I’d only ever worked part-time. Seeing four digits hit my bank account when that first loan payment dropped seemed like plenty to me.
I moved away from home for the first time just a month after I turned 18. In hindsight, I was much more naïve than I’d realised. I didn’t know how to cook and I’d never paid a bill in my life. My understanding of self-care was a good skincare routine and making my bed every morning. I really didn’t factor in all the other essentials that I’d have to master to become a fully-functioning adult.
After Freshers’ week, reality quickly set in. I was in a flat share with nine other people and I quickly learned that tea towels should never be communal and anything edible that doesn’t need to be in a fridge stays in your bedroom.
Colleagues can be friends
Before I had really adjusted to my new university life, friends and classmates quickly starting snapping up roles. Campus jobs are always inevitably the first to go. I always saw work as a miserable chore, never as something that could be enjoyable or valuable to life in any way. ‘As if I have work tomorrow’, is the most reassuring thing you can here at 2am on a Friday night when you’re unemployed. But, after a while, being the last one standing loses its novelty. I became quite envious of friends who went on ‘work dos’ and hung out with ‘work friends’. Most of my friends back home worked full-time, so I felt like I was constantly bouncing between uni and home to fill all my free time with whoever was available, whenever they were available.
Budgeting
Moving from Cambridge to a London suburb, the prices of day-to-day life didn’t seem too extravagant in comparison to costs back home. A double-vodka-lime-soda cost around £8 in both my hometown and my uni-town. So I pretty much based an entire budget strategy around be being able to afford my favourite alcoholic beverage. But when you have quarterly ingoing’s and daily outgoings thousands quickly turn to hundreds, and hundreds to tens. One thing I’ve definitely learned since is, if it was hard earned, it’s even harder to spend, which is why student loans are so easy to squander.
Loss of confidence
By second year I’d given up my hospitality role that I’d been doing over the half terms and holidays. Some of my friends were now being promoted in roles they’d worked in for the past year. Others were taking on roles for a couple of months while funds were low then leaving, only to resume working again a couple of weeks later when they came full-circle.
The thing is, the longer I was out of work, the harder it was to start again. Not only because gaps in your CV don’t look particularly great to an employer, but also because I lost confidence in my abilities.
The ‘Student schedule’
As expected, this is the most crucial year of your studies. By this time I’d decided my new workload made it literally impossible to study alongside work. I barely saw 3pm most days, because I was so used to being up all night and asleep all day
Maintaining good sleeping habits, good eating habits and good time-keeping are all life skills that being employed essentially force you to preserve. Although I had much more time on my hands than my fellow peers, I noticed that having to ‘book in’ time to study around work made it more likely to actually happen. It’s very easy to have the “I’ll do it later” attitude when you don’t have much else going on.
Feeling left behind
Spring of final year swiftly arrived, as did the stress of deciding those next steps. Finalising my dissertation, preparing to move-out, looking at possible internships and grad-roles whilst still considering further study seemed so overwhelming . I started to realise how much valuable time I’d wasted procrastinating and not getting a lot done. Friends started talking about trips they’d like to take after graduation that I unsurprisingly couldn’t afford. My savings account hadn’t seen a penny since it was opened.
My friends that were already in roles unrelated to their studies didn’t seem to feel immediate pressure to jump in to graduate roles or think about moving back home as they had the facilities in place to continue living away from home.
The Aftermath
It took over a year for me to sure my full-time first post-graduate role as an operations assistant. This was completely unrelated to my interests or course- but in light of the pandemic, I was still proud of myself. I found all my worries and woes that I was now a completely incompetent individual, incapable of surviving the 9-5 were all unfounded. Yes, it was hard, and a massive adjustment but I quickly realised all those skills I’d learned years ago, particularly in customer service weren’t entirely defunct.
All I kept thinking was, I wish I’d realised this sooner, rather than allowing unsubstantiated anxiety to stunt my potential for over a year. Working alongside a degree is practical and beneficial to some and not others , but rather than speculating, try for yourself and decide.