By Hannah Nepil
It is unfortunate that the most antagonistic of questions are amongst the most frequently asked.
Given the long list of tacit diplomatic no-nos which overshadow every social situation, you might have expected that the dreaded question “what’s next?” would have been outlawed long ago. But, to speak for embittered post-finalists everywhere, I can tell you it definitely hasn’t. Instead, it is assumed that the status of recent graduate lends itself to a little amicable interrogation, and we are again and again called upon to air our dirty laundry in public, to answer that question, and to justify our existence.
The intensity of the anguish triggered by this line of questioning is directly proportional to the amount of time we have spent dwelling on the matter ourselves. Those whose chosen career or further study path seems, not only to have been mapped out for them, but to clarify their entire previous existence, are able to sidestep the angst. On the other hand, those who find decision-making a source of trauma are landed, ironically, with a seemingly infinite collection of choices. Suddenly they are confronted with something that their comfortable sail through the education system has left them unprepared for.
It is these types who fall prey to the seduction of the ‘Random Job’, which can hold them captive for several years before they finally come to their senses. To this they can be spectacularly unsuited, as one graduate testifies, who spent her first year out of university as a pathologically squeamish anaesthetist. Luckily for her, however, she managed to exercise mind over matter by averting her gaze as she injected the fluid. “Did the patients never notice?” I asked. “I don't think so,” she answered thoughtfully, “they never said anything.”
For many, the heartless ejection from the education system triggers the instinct to grip for dear life to the umbilical chord, inducing a bee-line for postgraduate study of even the obscurest denomination. Happily there are plenty of courses which cater for this particular existential crisis. Between an MA in Adventure Tourism Management from Birmingham College of Food, Tourism and Creative Studies and the Msc in Playstation Studies from Sheffield Hallam University, we are spoilt for choice.
Others prefer to define a lack of direction in more straightforward terms, under the all-embracing umbrella term, “Nothing”.
“What do you mean, ‘Nothing’? How can you do ‘Nothing’?” I asked my friend incredulously.
“I mean, Nothing. I'm not working. I'm not studying. It's exhausting. I'm getting very into my daytime TV and I find there just aren't enough hours in a day” and he smirked, presumably at his own dazzling wit.
I could have asked how he was funding his “Nothing”, but given my stance on my student loan – “It's like monopoly money” – that had carried me through my three years as a student to Italy, Spain, China, New York and back, I did not want to risk sounding hypocritical. This attitude, I found, would come back to haunt me as I approached the close of my third year, forcing me to call my bank and attempt a negotiation of my overdraft. “What do you need it for?” I was asked by a frankly hostile third party.
“Oh, you know, my day-to-day living necessities”, I answered, struggling to annunciate my words through my Pret salad.
Surprisingly, I was unsuccessful and it was under dire financial straits that I decided to face up to my responsibility as a fully functional adult, giving up my place for a Masters and procuring for myself a job in an Estate Agents. When, two days in, I was turfed out, due to general ineptitude, until further notice, I rationalised away the shame.
Well. I didn't need them. I had a degree in Music, so I was bloody well going to use it. The next day I went busking, setting up camp outside the French Institute, round the corner from the infamous Estate Agents. For a couple of hours I regaled the hapless passers by with endless renditions of the French National Anthem, hoping to capitalise on the location. It was only when a fuming optician and two sheepish youths sporting orange City Council T-shirts sidled up that I realised that the game was over: An acknowledgement I was forced to revisit on my humble re-admittance to John D. Wood and co. where I found the following email in the collective junk inbox,
“Further to getting the boot, Hannah can be found “busking” outside the French Institute”.
The real world could wait. My masters course was beckoning, and with no more affectations of resistance, I followed.
