It’s All In The Eyes

One of the changes I’ve noticed in myself over the past year is a sudden inability to look people in the eye.

I still do it, a little bit. But I am absolutely certain that I never used to have such a large degree of trepidation when I was talking to people. Even people I know, friends, family. I can’t look at them for more than a second before before I’m having to look away.

I think a large part of it is down to my collapsing self-confidence over the last year. Confidence that has been knocked again and again because of my continual feelings of inadequacy. That I’m not achieving the life I thought I would. That I was promised going to university and getting a good degree would set me down the path of a really good life.

Unfortunately, none of that has happened. It’s been, as I have chroniced tirelessly since June last year, a complete failure. I had such high hopes, and high expectations on my shoulders, and none of it has come to pass.

That must have taken its toll on me. I can’t even look people like my mum and dad in the eye for very long any more. They can be trying to talk seriously to me, but I can’t bear to look for long. I feel like I don’t want to acknowledge their presence. If they look me in the eyes for too long, I fear they’ll see right through me and notice that I’m, these days, incredibly close to tears at the plight of this ridiculous situation I’m in.

It might improve, but I’ve been saying that all year. My business has struggled badly since I moved away, which has been a major disappointment. I really thought that working with my housemate would make all the difference, but it hasn’t. It has gone nowhere. All his ideas and promises have come to nothing. I’ve had two customers here in nearly a month. That’s not going to sustain £700/month living costs.

So what am I supposed to do? As I’ve scrawled a million times before, I really want to run a business. I don’t want to work for other people. But maybe I have to.

But to work for others, and to get through interviews, I’d need to dredge up some confidence from somewhere.

And when you’re at rock bottom after 18 months of near inactivity, that’s pretty damn hard. If you can’t bear to look people in the eye, they’re not going to trust you. That’s difficult for me right now.

I’m going to give it till Christmas. Then I’ll decide what to do.

400 Up

This post is a significant moment indeed. 400 posts now. I think each post has roughly 500 words in it, so we’re definitely north of 200,000 words now. Amazing.

But it’s only significant because the numbers look nice. Really, it’s just another post. It’s symptomatic of the whole of society when nice round dates and anniversaries are picked out to be more noteworthy than others, when really it just doesn’t matter. It’s my decision to celebrate anything at any time. In fact, I’m really looking forward to post 432. I don’t know why, but I am.

OK, I lied. Why not fall into tradition just this once. 400 posts shows some great stickability. I know posts in the past few months, if not longer, have not been particularly exciting. It’s just not been an interesting life since I left university. Most of that is my fault, but some of it has been caused by the economy too.

The coincidence about this post is that it is almost one year since I left Hull. That very anniversary will occur tomorrow, as it was on the 25th of May 2008 that I departed. That’s the most scary aspect about my life. I genuinely don’t know what I’ve done in the last year, what I’ve achieved, what progress I’ve made. There is nothing to report of any significance. All that’s happened is that I feel like I’ve aged, I feel like I’ve regressed, I feel like I’ve become more negative and cynical about everything, and I’ve made a somewhat farcical attempt to run my own business. What a strange old life I’m leaving.

So strange, in fact, that I’ve had enough. I’ve set a benchmark. By the end of the year, things have to have improved. If they haven’t, I will explore all options to escape. The prime contender in my list is New Zealand because of their working visa arrangements. Australia is also possible too. The reason why I have to wait till the end of the year though is that I think my business needs a little longer to prove itself a disaster, and secondly my money is locked away until then anyway. And who knows what other countries could come onto the agenda. All of this coming at a time when the government is telling us recent graduates to bugger off, hence not joining the dole queue and not being a drain on the country’s finances. Yes, very clever that. Fuck the economy up and then ask us to leave. Thanks.

But, let’s face it, things can’t get any worse for me. I’m already at rock bottom. It’s simply that day after day of no hope really does make me feel pretty shit about myself. And this even comes after I spent Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week actually doing work for my business. Yes, I had three days of the stuff and earned some cash. My business is actually in the black right now. So maybe things aren’t too bad. I just need word of mouth to start spreading. Please!

Anyway, that’s quite enough misery for now. Let’s turn instead to watching some TV. I hear the world of politics is a particularly well-respected place to work these days. Yes, that politics degree really has come in handy.

2009

2009 started with either an eerie co-incidence or an example of perfect timing. 

We rushed out into the street, me checking the time on Teletext with just 50 seconds to go. I don’t normally get ready so late, but I had decided to give the pre-midnight part of our usual New Year party a miss… instead choosing to sit with my brothers in the front computer room. It was actually nice to spend some time with them, I don’t normally do that. Anyway…

I looked at the clock, it was too late to synchronise my watch with Teletext, so I took a rough stab at it. At 20 seconds to go, I started the countdown and ran out to join the rest of the family in the street. 

At exactly zero seconds, a firework went off. That was pretty impressive. I think it was a co-incidence, but it was a nice one.

After midnight I joined the party, having a pretty good time. Not everyone was here, but there was enough people to talk to. But there was a surprising degree of very small children making a lot of noise. My cousins and an uncle have had children recently, and by Christ they made a lot of noise. A lot. Some of them are toddlers now, and bringing them all together is a deadly combination. Lots of activity. Too much for me, I wanted a quiet New Year!

Fat chance of that in this family. But it was all over by 3:30am, a much more reasonable time after the terribly late finishes of previous parties. After five hours sleep, I felt pretty good. It’s amazing how little sleep you actually need.

But now to consider the forthcoming year. 2009. It always feels weird writing the New Year, which is why it’s a tradition to name the first post of each new year after the year itself. It gets me used to it. 2009. Bloody hell. Was it really nine years ago when we celebrated the millennium? That’s frightening.

2009 is a make or break year for me. Now a graduate, a graduate with a damn good degree from a damn good department in an average university. I should really be able to do something with that. But, most probably, I won’t. Simply because I don’t want to. It just doesn’t seem the right direction for my life.

But what does? Well, that one has to be answered in the first few months of this year. I simply must either have a job or be properly self-employed by the end of February. That is my deadline and I can’t afford to let it slip. My life is going by and I don’t have any money to live it. That simply has to stop.

In general too, the time going by with me idle is not good either. That would be solved if I got a job, so I’m not too worried about that. But I need to be enjoying my life more anyway. I’m not right now, and that’s extremely sad. We only got one life after all.

But for the first four months of this year, I know I will have to live with the trauma of recent events. Until our injured player is walking around again, the burden of guilt, what ifs and sorrow of seeing someone suffering and being partly responsible, even in just a tiny way, will remain with me. For me, April can’t come soon enough.

That will occur naturally, which is a good thing. Unlike the job search, which needs me to get off my arse and do something about it.

I also feel that I’ve got something big in me this year. Whether that is the self-employment front, or some other thing, I feel the time is right for me to achieve it. Lately, I’ve been thinking seriously about my ambition to run a much larger football team. That would be a good challenge. There is a way I could do it too. Gonna have a think about that.

And in life, I could do with something different. Will I actually have a long term girlfriend this year? Hmm, that’s one I’m really unsure about while I’m living at home. Or maybe I’ll move out for good. Somehow I doubt it at the moment, but I’ve gotta say I’d like that to happen right now. 

For my family, I’d like to be better friends with my brothers. I’ve already started on that. We need to do more stuff together. I see my dad’s family, none of whom hardly ever see or even speak to each other. Maybe once a year for Christmas. It would be a terrible shame if we ended up like that. On a darker note, I’m really not sure what to expect from the rest of my family health wise this year. That’s going to be a constant source of worry.

So there is a lot on the line for me this year. I’m filled with a little foreboding about it. Yet the uncertainty is part of the excitement.

Here goes nothing.

That Was The Year That Was

It’s customary around these parts to review the year when I finally reach the fag-end of it. And sure enough, today seems the most opportune moment to do so. 

The beauty of this exercise is that I am aided in my assessment by looking back to the post I made on January 1st in which I set down what I expected to happen this year.

This year started coldly, in the same way as it’s finishing coldly. The weather made me dread going back to Hull after Christmas, and it was even worse this year because I had exams awaiting me there. But back I went, nailing the buggers, and getting on with the rest of university life. 

The months ticked by, not a lot happened with me other than ploughing on with my university work. After all, it was my final year and I had a dissertation to write, an absolute monster spanning 15,000 words. But I did it…

Winter gave way to Spring, and yet more exams appeared over the horizon. But all of a sudden I had a new goal. Away had went my previous expectations of being able to get a 2:1. All of a sudden I’d done so well in my previous exams, essays and the dissertation to know that I could, if I pushed myself, get a First. 

The exam revision was hellish. It would be another two months before I finally got the answer I was hoping for.

In the meantime, I moved back home and began preparing for life doing a PGCE. My plan was to become a primary school teacher, as it was something I had found interesting when I did lots of work experience for them. But as the months went by, I found myself backtracking from this commitment. Somehow, it just didn’t seem right any more. Each day another seed of doubt was sewn. I felt like I was just doing it because I didn’t have any other plans.

Days later there was the joy of the graduation result, a First, and the day itself, which was a very happy moment. Then my brain began to think up alternatives. If not teaching, what else? 

Unfortunately, to this day there is no answer to that question, made worse by the fact that the recession seems to be seriously damaging my prospects. I tried and tried, but ratcheted up just two interviews, one of which was a disaster not worth repeating, and the other was a long journey to London which ended with the same result. In any event, I soon learned that a First in politics is not really that useful. 

And so the remaining months of the year have been spent here, where I’ve lived out a rather odd existence as a houseson, spending my time looking after the house while my parents aren’t here, helping my brother and sister with their homework, and generally mooching around watching DVDs or reading books. 

Not good, basically. 

Because of all this, I am, for the first time in a while, not going to label this as a Good Year. Though it started well, and the middle bit was pretty sweet, the end has been a disaster. So this is a Neutral Year. 

For the rest of my family, I have been fortune that the sadness I feared was going to happen with my grandparents has not yet arrived. In fact, things are pretty much as they were at the start of the year. So that is some comfort. But I am still worried about what might happen in the near future. 

Meanwhile, my younger but elder of my brothers has gone to university, and seems to be enjoying it. The other brother has begun his GCSEs and is turning into a right scally. But he’s still my brother, and as amusing as ever. And my sister has gone all girly-girly, but has turned into a massive couch potato, watching soaps, reality TV and endless Nickelodeon shows. Not good at all.

My elder sister didn’t keep up with her nurse training, but now has a job for the first time in a long time. Her son, my nephew, has, unfortunately, become very naughty and very thick, a change which has upset me a lot. I suspect it’s related to the beginnings of a long and tedious legal battle that will kick off in 2009 as his useless father tries to score some points over my sister. 

As for my parents, well, I can’t help but feel that living here has changed the dynamic of their relationship. Some times I feel like I’m the referee of their silly conflicts, like they appeal to me for a judgement on who is to blame for things. I don’t like it, and hope I don’t have to put up with it for much longer. 

So, sorry 2008, but I’ll be glad to see the back of you. Things just haven’t gone anywhere near the way I thought they would. A shame, but we move on…

Whither Degree?

In the past few days I’ve been thinking of things I can do with my life. The problem with every single one of them is that invariably my first doubt is, “Well, what was the point of the degree then?”

This is the question that, to me, killed off the prospects of the job I had an interview for. It was the question that said to my prospective employer that here is someone who doesn’t know what they want, has no focus and is indecisive.

But every time I think of the things I might want to do to get me out of this rut, my brain is very concerned about the wasted last four years. Because what was the point of my degree otherwise? Herein lies the warning to all future students: be wary of generic degrees if you’re only doing them because you don’t know what you want to do in life. The only purpose is certainly to delay taking a decision, and get away from parents, but at the end of it, when you’re trying to convince employers that your degree is relevant to them, you’ll regret the choice. And worse, when you finally get the job, you’ll probably think that you could have got the same job several years earlier, and be both without debt and several thousand pounds better off.

The only people who say, “We’ll take any degree” are the often suspiciously dodgy graduate programmes that some companies and the civil service run. I have friends and relatives in the civil service who say that the whole thing is shambolic at best, an exercise in avoiding responsibility by taking no decisions, usually because the senior managers are hopeless. And where do most of the senior managers come from? The graduate fast track programme, people with little to no experience of the real world.

But all of this feeling sorry for myself really has to come to an end soon. I’m trying, I really am, but it’s hard when you pick up the jobs section of the local paper every week, dismiss virtually all of them as being irrelevant (no experience, no qualification, no interest, poor pay, not enough hours), and in the final few that I could do I say, “Well, you could have done that job straight after A-Levels!”. I apply for them and get rejected… perhaps because of overqualification. And even if I managed to get one, they aren’t jobs with logical career progressions. I really don’t know anymore. Why take a job that I’ll want to leave within a few years, one that doesn’t lead me anywhere?

So there are two choices here:

1) Resume applying for jobs that are relevant to the politics degree
2) Give very, very serious consideration to the self-employment options available to me. I would love working for myself…

One day I’ll be able to report good news on here, that the cycle has finally been broken. But on the day the economy took its first step towards official recession, I don’t think it’s likely to be any time soon.

Retread

In a working life, the old adage is “Never go back”. The reasoning is obvious: if you’re having to go back, then it means you’re not going forward!

Unfortunately, it seems that, in desperation, it might well be something I will have to do. There are no prospects for employment right now, it seems. Seven applications, six outright rejections, one interview, followed by a rejection. I think someone’s trying to tell me something. From the interview I had, I’m certain it’s because everyone is wondering “Why is someone with a politics degree applying for this job?”.

In truth, it’s a damn good question, and the one I struggled to answer when it was put to me this time a week ago. It’s making me wonder what the point of doing a generic degree was. Everyone said “It’s better to do a degree that keeps your options open”. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I couldn’t disagree more. In fact, it’s bloody useless. If I apply for a political job, it will be useful. But for anything else, people are suspicious. They wonder whether they can trust that level of wayward judgement. And so I’m found wanting, time after time.

The delay in finding a job has now reached such a level that earlier on I visited somewhere I used to work and asked if they have any Christmas temporary jobs coming up. The answer was yes, and, assuming they have the hours to spare, they will probably offer me the job.

So the retread is very much on the cards. But for me, it seems the only option. The jobs section in the local paper is getting shorter and shorter as the economy contracts and wallets tighten. Getting this job would give me a couple of months to weather the storm, earn some money while I’m at it, get me out of the house and maybe make me feel a little better about myself. Because, in all honesty, I’m getting quite desperate now. Serious depression is round the corner, and I haven’t felt like that in a long time.

It seems like the obvious solution to me. It will buy me some time to give this whole situation a bit more thought. Because I bloody need it. If I don’t have a job, there’s no way I’ll be able to afford a nice Christmas with my family. I can’t even afford some new clothes right now. Having to make the old ones last a little longer.

All I can hope for is that this economic problem is temporary. There are jobs out there, of course there are. But, when you’ve got a degree, you really feel like you shouldn’t have to do them. 20 years of study and I could be a cleaner? I could have done that leaving school at 16. That’s what’s annoying about all this. You raise your expectations, you put in years of effort, you dare to dream about the future and what you might be able to achieve. And then you arrive at the promised land and find that really it just looks the same as it would have done anyway.

What I’m suffering is not unique. I know friends who are in the same position, doing jobs that they didn’t need a degree for, one they’ve studied hard for and got the debt to prove it. Now they’re cast aside and forced to set fire to all their hopes and dreams, stuck living in their parents houses until they can get out of the rut.

If the education system can’t deliver on its promises, then what is the point?

BA (Hons?)

There is some debate about whether or not people with undergraduate degrees in the UK can legitimately put “(Hons)” after their degree award… largely for the reason that almost all degree courses are honours degree ones, and you only get an “ordinary” degree if you fail a lot of modules in your final year.

I suspect it’s just another part of the general devaluation of everything academic in this country, if not this planet. As I’ve grown up, every qualification I’ve ever received has always been panned by the media at just the time I got it. This is true for GCSEs and A-Levels, and now it is even becoming true of degrees. Great timing, as always. Just when I stop to think “hey, I’ve done all right!” – the world bleats out its usual message of “you haven’t, try again”.

So people have started adding on “Hons” to make it sound better than it actually is. I look at the requirements to get an honours degree in other countries, and thus legitimately call yourself “Hons” but they seem so much harder. But this is where it gets ridiculous because of how low the grading is in the UK for arts based subjects. It virtually impossible to get above 80% (I haven’t heard of it)… whereas this must definitely be possible in Australia. Well, my only source on this is Wikipedia, but still…

The reason why all this is in my mind is because in the past week I’ve had my graduation ceremony. I was up at 6am, and I finally got back at 11:45pm. A very long day, but a memorable one. Me and my parents, plus my sister and my gran came with me. Unfortunately, my grandad couldn’t because he’s not well at the moment, which he was disappointed about. It makes me a little sad too… I know full well that I could have graduated last year had I not took a gap year or did a three year course. Then he could have been there.

Nevertheless, it was still a fairly proud moment. I realised just how few people get first class degrees, so that was a very nice moment. The ceremony wasn’t all good, however, as I was sitting next to two people I didn’t know, but unfortunately, they knew each other – so they spent all the time talking over me. It then got worse when the person sitting next to me kept bugging me to ask what the Chancellor had asked me when we did the little “stop and chat” (to use a Larry David-ism) that only people who get firsts are allowed to do.

It’s nice to get the recognition… but it has also given me pause for even more thought. The Chancellor gave a very good speech in which she said how delighted she was to hear (from her little chats) that so many people with first class degrees were going into teaching. That’s what I told her, cos I didn’t have anything else to say. I didn’t want to say I was drifting aimlessly. But she said how wonderful and noble the profession is and that it will be in safe hands with such high quality graduates.

Then, speaking to my tutors at the reception afterwards, they were all highly approving of my choice to do a PGCE. They believe it’s a very worthwhile occupation.

This is somewhat in contrast to my family. But worse, it is in contrast to most of the teachers I’ve ever spoken to, who take every opportunity to disparage their profession when I talk to them. They often say “You’ve got a first class degree and you want to be a teacher?”. I find this a bit weird.

The most disappointing part of the day, however, was the feeling I got from my gran, and I’ve got from the rest of my family in general. We’re all from very humble origins. I am the first to be a university graduate on both sides of the family. But they don’t seem to realise just how much of an achievement this is. Because my family don’t understand what it means, and a lot of them have a very working class attitude of “we stick together”, some of them think that going to university is just not the done thing for someone from a working class background. I definitely got this attitude to my gran. She has rather bizarre views that won’t let her speak to anyone who isn’t a Labour supporter…

This is all new to them, but they see it all as middle class, elitist and not something the normal workers would do. My gran deliberately went out to thank the people who’d built and were taking down the marquee as we left, (“the world doesn’t run without the workers!”) and told them they should take a bottle of the wine that was left over. It had nothing to do with her, of course.

I agree with her sentiment. But we are all workers. Class is a very sad state of mind, one that is absolutely useless and serves no purpose. But that’s politics, and best left out here…

Overall though, it was a very nice day. I know my mum and dad are proud. But now I’ve really got to get my thoughts into order to make this whole bloody thing worthwhile.

In A First Class Mood

Well, the day is finally here. The day of the exam results.

And, would you credit it, I only appear to have notched up a First.

How I’ve done it I don’t know. I do know that I worked myself into the ground for most of last year. Well, perhaps not that much, but I did do a lot of work, certainly far more than I did in second year. That may have been down to the dissertation, but I’m sure I also did more work preparing for tutorials and reading for essays.

Either way, it seems to have paid off. All that work to make the “21″ sign turn into a “1″ on the results website.

I still won’t believe it until I have a piece of paper in front of me telling me I did it. I haven’t even celebrated properly because of a terrible night’s sleep last night (too much dreaming about exams, sad bastard) and the anti-climactic nature of finding out my results before the designated time. The exam results website always releases the results much earlier than it’s supposed to, and it did so again today.

I’ve only just scraped home as a result of procedures allowing an average in the borderline (i.e. 69) to be upgraded if you have enough firsts in general (which I did), but if you’re going to get a degree classification then you might as well scrape home than be comfortable, for the simple reason that whether I get a first with 69 or a first with 80 it is still “only” a First. Would the extra work be worth it? Would it even be possible given the stingy marking of politics lecturers? Somehow, I doubt it.

In a way I’m relieved. After all this hype and all this expectation, and a string of good results this year (all of my essays, exams and the dissertation were firsts, except for one exam), I was beginning to think “I would be disappointed with a 2:1″. I hate saying that. It’s crazy, I know. At the end of second year I was ecstatic with being a solid 2:1er. I thought I’d worked hard that year and deserved a 2:1, so I was pleased with that.

Then I realised this year how hard I hadn’t worked. After all the effort I put it, I thought it wasn’t really worth it because there was no way I could reverse the middle-of-the-road result I’d got in second year. But no, it was possible.

And once things started turning in my favour I got an inevitable sense of “this is mine if I try hard enough”. And so I did.

And so it came to pass. And I round off my academic career (for now, anyway…) with the top grade possible.

It’s beginning to dawn on me what I’ve achieved over the past four years, but it will take a little longer to sink in.

What a day.