All of these assumptions are if you are a graduate (like me) and if you are currently living at home (like me) you would have no doubt encountered some of the situations below by now.
Relish the feeling of utter inadequacy:
- You wonder during your third year that you had “no idea” why half of society goes to bed at 11pm when you go to bed a lot lot later. Why does everyone go to bed at half ten? Why doesn’t everyone stay up for most of the night? Why don’t people go out clubbing more during the week? WHY AREN’T WE LIKE OWLS AND WE TWEET LIKE BIRDS ALL FRRRRREEEEEEEEEAAAAAAKKKKIIINNNN NIGHT. Then you get a 9-5. Then you realise.
- You go to the cupboard. TINS! You go to the fridge. MILK! You go to the toliet. TOLIET PAPER!
- You watch This Morning just the same as you did at University, but by now you feel much more guilty. If you watch Loose Women in my honest opinion you don’t deserve having a job. YOU ARE A LIABILITY.
- You no longer have to spend mid-morning throwing takeaway adverts that came through your letterbox into the bin.
- No longer do you have to rescue them from the bin when you realise that you have no more food in your cupboard.
- You can’t leave your washing up on the draining board to rinse, despite the fact that you claim that all the pots and pans need to dry over a series of a few hours. You will do this approximately three times as you continue to forget, essentially meaning a ‘Mt Kilamanjaro’ size hill of pans after lunch and dinner.
- You will be shouted by your parents because you don’t know where a single kitchen utensil live, when washing up after dinner. They stare at you as you erratically try to find a space within the cupboard to no avail, without resorting to the usual method of stacking a cheese grater on top of a frying pan, balanced awkwardly on a collinder in a cupboard that’s normally full of cleaning products.
- When you come back from University you end up throwing away a lot of your belongings as they have been destroyed or lost, so your room looks like a safe house. Then over the course of several months all of you have gained is a giant board with some pictures of drunken nights out and poster of a place that you have never been to. Heck, at least you can see the carpet this time round.
- You no longer have to keep refreshing your online bank account on the first week of term just so you could go and purchase a pint of milk.
- When you go shopping in supermarkets you don’t have to do down the aisles to find the product you need, before finding the product you need, then looking below and finding the most plainest and cheapest knock-off product and moaning.
- You go home after the end of a long day and you find that your room, the kitchen and the living room is slightly tidier than when you first left.
- You go home after the end of a long day and you find that you room the kitchen and the living room is slightly tidier than when you first left. But then you get some person “complaining” that they had to do it first.
- You still carry your Uni Card, and if it has an expiration date, you cover the expiration date with your thumb whenever you purchase with it. Either that or you keep it at a great distance from the person who needs to see it. You just pick it out of your pocket, yell “ONE STUDENT PLEASE.” You nod slightly, and then put it avidly away.
- You undergo long debates with friends on the phone or relatives in the household regarding a contemporary topic, which is related to the degree that you originally chose. Slowly but surely you realise that they don’t really care about domestic politics, or an author’s latest work or the state of the global economy. So you vent your anger and frustration the only way you can: The Guardian Website.
- On Facebook you are invited to every single Fresher’s event in the world. Even though you leave all of the groups that are associated to all of the events that you have been invited, you still have fresh in your mind what the event is and where it will be at what time. You also flick through the photos whilst watching some rubbish series on ITV2 in a mild fit of tears.
- And you think that you aren’t going to make it in, that the ideas and aspirations you had whilst you was a student of a career is further away than it has ever been before. Relax, its early days. This is one of the only opportunities that you have in life that you can really make a plan of action and try things out. Have faith. You can do it. There is still time.