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After leaving university, my precarious existence has made me question whether a stronger mindset could have carved a stronger path. Thoughts about job security, money, housing, relationships and more have come flooding into mind for someone who only thought about learning. Now, perhaps like others, I find myself as a lone fish wandering the seabed. Learning can no longer be the sole focus. The need for survival and building a future turns a period of curious abstraction and rationalisation futile. The market comes with a price and demands its character and practice. After years stuck in the academic hole as a naïve youngster, the leap into the competitive economy been a difficult and awkward one. Graduation soon brings with it a stretch of adulthood, entering spiralling questions about one’s role, purpose and prospects. If you are like me, still wandering this lush planet, life looks all but ominous amidst continuous job applications and anxiety over what the future holds for you. Estimates suggest more than 2.3 million graduates are searching for a job while only around 30,000 graduate job vacancies are advertised per month. University is life-changing, it can be the proudest feeling for not just students but also their family. However, despite the many successes’ university can bring, my time after graduation was a descent into the abyss. I suddenly felt lonely and worthless.  The paradox being a university degree never felt so worthless. While I do not regret the enlightening experiencing of going to university, the purpose of this article is to remind students there is great value in thinking practically about their future. Gaining knowledge and intelligence is great but it is not the same thing as experience and wisdom; a degree is not everything, work is not everything.

1. Narrow your career path and interests:

We are often told from a young age to follow what we are best at but what if that message has never been clear? For some their environment gives them an auspicious route to picking up a career. For others, their aptitude and enjoyment for a particular subject relish from a young age and forms their life-long passion. However, others, like me, could not define our interests due to feeling greater pressure in juggling and succeeding equally across myriad subjects. The sole focus on ‘schoolwork’ served as a prevaricating factor in answering what I want from life career-wise. This may be an experience more of us realise only after graduating. There is no one to blame, especially not yourself, the thought only serves as a poke to try a new approach. My wide and unfocused interests led me to a Politics degree. The result was not bad, but I return to realising the importance of specialising.

Specialisation does not meet sacrificing hobbies or your many curious interests. When it comes to finding a job, a career path, specialisation means placing greater commitment in a specific practical field inside your chosen subject area. Focusing your interest on something more specific immediately makes you more marketable to securing a job. That job still does not mean your career determines your entire future nor that your many other interests need to be eradicated. The need to focus and specialise forms an important sign of entering adulthood and getting employment. Life requires increasing simplification as you will take on more responsibilities, and likely a need to escape more stresses.

I believe many of us like I did are not giving enough time and space to connect to the values we uphold and can follow into successful, enjoyable career paths. I pondered and saw that my university degree could not answer what I wanted from my professional life. The journey into college/sixth form, then university reflected a passive acceptance of following school’s due course and not rightfully what and why I wanted from life. Finding your passion and career path is often a life mission. It is fine to not know and with life’s diversity, susceptible to change. I rediscovered love in creative writing, philosophy and computing, realising I was not selfish enough in creating my path. A career path need not be defined by extraordinary wealth or fame, finding stronger purpose and contentment is key.

Return to the importance of pinning down a job role or position in whatever most interests you. You may think this is obvious or wild, what about those worldly interests I have? I like space and football, but I don’t think I will ever become an astronaut or a footballer as my ordinary self. As a young adult, you can already see how your gut can feel alien to far-stretched ideals and feeling closer to things you genuinely enjoy or are good at doing before your rational mind quickly cancels future thoughts. Thinking about the question of what you want from this world and the surviving rest with a free mind can allow you to realign with prevailing hobbies, skills, and interests practical to your finding a career speciality.

You will likely discover you possess more than a foundation than previously thought to build on. With enough will, dedicating some time, money and effort, a career path can be cultivated. I highly recommend exploring Ted Talks for some great exercises to help narrow down activities and interests that matter to you. Charlie Packer recommends imagining yourself through a mirror, in a world-ending scenario where you are forced to think about the things you would most miss. Just remember there are moments and places you would never have imagined. Finding your connected interests then makes it possible to think practically and decisively about what job or sector you may want to work in. It may even appear university is not your ideal route, which is great if you now have a clearer image to purposively and bravely steps towards. In short, avoid the mistake of leaping into university studies without feeling a connection to the jobs and roles in that field. Think practically about what you may want to work as, as soon as possible, so you are aware of what opportunities can best develop your skills and interests towards that career goal.

2. Target your studying experience to a specialised role:

As a Politics graduate, a persistent question followed me: “How was all I ever going to apply all this theoretical, abstract knowledge in the workplace?” I gained many transferrable skills and a greater awareness of this world. Yet, my disregard for finding a niche to get employment during my studies fired back at me. There I was, a first-class degree and little canniness to take on the real world of work and living. I seek to stress from my experience the importance of studying and learning practices to find a job in your studied field or the next. Money becomes a necessity whether you like it or not as far it concerns survival and lifestyle.

Harness practically into every module, asking yourself how this can be relevant to the type of role I want to pursue. This may involve going back to step one, checking what you have chosen holds both interest and purpose. Your C.V. can quickly become nicely moulded through relevant work experience and activities, by volunteering, internships and when possible some part-time work. This will give you a relieving head-start on connecting your intellectual development towards practical work life. The strive down this narrowing practical path will instil a reassurance that there is a type of activity, value or skill you can do well. In short, do not be afraid to push your intellectual development towards asking how it could benefit you also in developing your career. Money may not be everyone’s driver but remains the base of living and job security.

3.Maintain faith in purposeful learning:

To maximise the potential of learning you must embrace a larger life lesson that is to embrace difference through successes and failures. Forget perfection and discover the process of learning will not be the neatest, as long as it remains purposeful. I have battled through imposter syndrome since childhood and only recently realised how common this problem is for people. Every achievement and struggled forced me back into my shell and question have lost my abilities and knowledge? Why the hell can I not succeed now? The all-too-common phrase: ‘fail soon and fail hard’ could not have felt more relevant.

Success depends on failure. A failure could be enough to throw away unnecessary doubts and pursue what you always wanted. At the end of the day, it is yourself who is improving, not what others do or say. Accept situations you find tough, remember it is life’s way of teaching us things whoever we may be.  We are all our sailors in life’s tumultuous sea. Our interests and individual efforts keep us sailing. Solutions can be unconventional and spontaneous, there is no right answer beyond our morals to the adventure.

I find myself manoeuvring through this hypothetical scenario as I learn to code, pushing through times I see the end goal far away in the distance. A career advisor told me, young people all too quickly think their career is over when a new career path or interest comes to the surface later in their development stage. People often fail to appreciate the many years ahead of them; if in your 20s, then there are 40+ years till retirement! In far lesser time, anyone can have a career transformation as long as you maintain belief in the thing you want. The truth is life is only ever decided and over when you are in your grave. Embrace learning and chase practically what you feel an affinity towards.

4. Forget what other’s think:

I have naturally come to realise the importance of forgetting what other’s think and living by your thoughts and actions. Social media in today’s age is everything. People’s identity and life are all out there online. Firstly, there is no denying social media can be great. It has been revolutionary in connecting us, promoting businesses and keeping us entertained. But you would be surprised how little it matters to personal agency. Much of the conflict online, expressing resentment, jealousy and prejudice, fails to reflect the actual billion of people preoccupied with their own space living relatively peacefully. Digital opinion and perception matter so little when one takes into consideration what you will do to help yourself and others, how day and night continue and personal relationships.  

Bring the focus back to yourself and ask what are you most proud of and what are you doing to improve yourself? Increasingly, I have learnt to detach myself from this superficial climate of toxicity and eternal happiness and work towards improving myself. This focused mindset forms a powerful driver for those studying to hone their learning towards practices they want. There is no point dwelling on the opinions of others when we all have the potential to be unique and compassionate. The world is not perfect but there is a large portion to garner for enjoyment and improvement.

5. Stop panicking!

Getting over the line meant everything yet with the process of letting go you quickly realise there can only be so many deadlines to there really being none but death.

With all things said, do not allow your mind to be bogged down by more pressure about the future. Life with everything in life, there is balance and so ultimately there is truly only such much planning you can do. Much of your findings and results will depend on the larger world that is out of your hands. Do not take things too personally as I eventually learned. At any stage, whether you go into university, are scaling the course, or stuck after graduation, there will never be a clear, heavenly crafted path ahead. Heck, I’m in the extreme and remain in discovery mode.

Where I found acceptance and happiness in my life was to appreciate life as it is. The quickest and biggest jump you can make right now is to work with the way you have. To remind yourself of what you have, what you possess and what you would like to explore, to fill the void that you should see with light rather than darkness. As one of the ills in modern society, we need to humbly drop our expectations from the world around us and focus on what we can do better right now. By honing to the present, there is much tranquillity to be found in accepting there is more to graduating and climbing corporations. Ponder on your achievements through life, your values as a human and where you can make small adjustments.

Panicking at the big picture is far too easy and destructive. When we’re envisioning a bright future, we were all promised as a child, being so ‘gifted’, it is fair to admit many of our expectations did not fall in line with reality. We hear stories, go on social media and also see the mammoth achievements of others, leaving us feeling even worse. In some instances, envious of others. As I learnt through Stoicism that the best remedy in a world reminding us of Rousseau’s amour do propre, just let go of things. Remember it is only you who is in control of your actions and thoughts. Taking control of yourself will mean learning that is not others but you who holds the authority to shape your destiny, not the verdict of others who threatens to impose an identity on you. So, with everything in life, start small. There will be difficult times ahead. But embrace every moment of what you still have and work on bettering it. Again, doing better does mean leaping to the bigger picture but doing what remains within your control. As Marcus Aurelius wonderfully teaches:

“If you seek tranquillity, do less.” Or (more accurately) do what’s essential—what the logos of a social being requires, and in the requisite way. Which brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better. Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, “Is this necessary?” But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.”

Marcus Aurelius, medidtations

My plough through the sticky mud of post-graduation has been through returning to the things I have long loved and working on building those skills within the framework of knowledge I have gained.

The post-university struggle has taught me that there is so much more to life than following the school’s enshrined path to university study. A degree no longer means securing a job. For those fortunate to have their mind set on a career path, university is often a must and is the pathway for tremendous growth. But those undecided and fortunate to contemplate, it is worth remembering learning can take place beyond the yearly £9,000 tuition fee cost. It has become clear getting a job in today’s fast-moving economy requires more people and personal skills than the level of academic knowledge. The step into university is momentous for many although most valuable to those with a practical plan and purpose.