By Sophia Romanos
It’s not even halfway through the year - heck it might not even be halfway through your degree, but the question of what will you be doing after you graduate is quietly looming.
Your final year is a hectic one. You know at Christmas time when your Mum says, “NOOO-WA” she doesn’t need a hand with the food but is frantically cursing her way around the kitchen, something’s kinda burning and you’re also stressing about the shit present your sister is about to open from you? If you could be graded on how you manage that level of stress, that’d be your final year of uni.
As enticing as sinking copious amounts of Part Time Rangers on the lawn of your shitty flat is, finishing your studies with good grades is annoyingly tempting. Uni is a stable few years where you can work on your future, pay student rates on the AT losercruiser, and rely heavily on Studylink’s dosh. But once that time is over - what happens? Do we want to settle for a job that keeps us afloat? Do you get the nuggets without sweet and sour sauce? Of course not. You’ve just smashed out the total of your degree, you deserve more. There’s this entitlement that you don’t want anything less than the entry-level gate-to-Heaven position that’s going to get your career moving. And for some lucky buggers, this is a reality, but for the rest, there’s something else in the cards.
Don’t fret about where your little nugget of a brain will be put to use in a job post-Studylink, it will fall into place. But if you need someone to put your mind at ease that’s done the hard yards and the stress-cake-eating sessions - here are some of my hottest tips of all tips for the post-uni panic:
Hottest Tips of All Tips:
- Put your feelers out early
The thought would have crossed your mind as you sat in a 300-person lecture and sniffed around at the competition - How the hell are all of us going to get jobs? Start looking early in the year for potential position openings. It could start as an internship and ease into full-time work later, you never know...I mean one day we could buy Maccas and now we’re in four-week lock-down so THERE YOU HAVE IT.
- Make connections
Network, network, network. Go to open studios, panel-discussions and events in your area. Be sure to also make use of your lecturers for advice on job-hunting in your industry. There are people out there to help you, don’t be afraid to ask. Just don’t open the emails that offer sexy singles $300 a day to work from home. Those are fake.
- Have patience, grasshopper
Your dream job may not come in the time it takes to make a cheese toastie and that’s quite alright.
Your degree doesn’t expire
You have so much time to put that educated pink sponge in your skull to good use - if you want to park it and do something completely unrelated - you do you (boo). For some, it’s earning dollars until they’ve got the hang of the 9-5 grind and have successfully avoided Bar101 for two months. Patience can simply mean waiting for the right job to surface.
In saying all this uneducated nonsense that sometimes comes to my mind - do whatever you bloody well want. I think if the C-word (COVID-19, not THAT C-word) has taught us anything, it’s that a lot of what we stress over is the small stuff. So put your feet up, have a loose plan and be prepared for it to change.
And dear, sweet baby Jesus, do us all a favour and have a drink, we all need it
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