Any third year (or indeed, humanities student full stop) dreads the question, ‘so, what are you going to do after university?’ With that in mind, it must take an absolute masochist to answer a 75 question survey on their plans post-graduation. And yet, that is what I found myself doing during a library break this week.
The Times Leavers Survey is a comprehensive (and terrifying) questionnaire that grills you on what you’ve done so far at university in terms of gainful experiences, and what you expect from your job as a result of it. It is, without a doubt, the most agonising experience I have undergone throughout my degree.
Consider this question: ‘In ten years’ time, what do you hope to have achieved?’ In all honesty, my answer would probably be something like, ‘Well, I’d like to have got over the year-long depression that follows my two or three years of job-seeking in vain, rued my 8 years spent getting work experience in sectors that I now have no interest in joining, come to terms with the prosperity of my friends who chose to not go to university and adjusted my expectations for happiness in inverse proportion to inflation rises and the housing market. I’ll probably have settled down into a job in fast food management and may have even convinced myself that that’s what I wanted all along.
However, this being The Times, the options raised from the mildly inappropriate (given the nature of the survey) ‘I will be married’ (look forward to the headline: more women eschewing marriage for careers in shock survey results) to the outright ludicrous, ‘I will be earning more than 100k a year.’ There were 13 options to choose many from, and I considered them for a while in frustration before scribbling a giant ‘N/A’ next to all of them.
The people who crafted this survey are remarkably out of touch with what our generation really expects from their time after university and even more so when it comes to understanding how we picture our lives in the future. We are lucky if we have a solid plan for a year’s time, let alone five or ten. I know what all my peers are planning to do to put off employment, but as for what they’ll do after that? No one has a clue.
The days of walking into a job, of renting a place in London before moving out to the suburbs with your life partner, of affording children in your 20s or even early 30s are long, long gone in all but the minds of the conservative old. We have inherited a shit heap of a world from our parents’ generation, and yet they are surprised that, if anything, we don’t have too many job offers.
Is it any wonder students are stressed in third year? Even if you do get a good grade there is no grantee of anything at the end of it.
But take solace in this, fellow doom-mongers: you are not alone. It is the grown-ups, with their false ideas of life’s narrative putting this pressure and fear on us – and it is the freak outliers who have their lives planned out; the rest of us, the terrified, clueless multitude, are the norm. Alas worry not! Enjoy your late nights in Willow, we’ve got another 60 years to hit The Times’ arbitrary boundary lines for success; why waste our youth while we’re young?