When I grow up, I want to be… unemployed

So what do you want to do when you’ve finished?” Honestly, if I had a penny for every time someone has asked me that question over the past few months I would have a very nice answer: Immediate retirement. In the Caribbean. Unfortunately, thus far no one has agreed to pay me said pennies, and I am therefore stuck with a rather different answer: Sorry, I haven’t a clue.

Now this wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t always been one of those people who’s had a fairly good idea of where they’re going next. I’ve never had any difficulty deciding what school I wanted to go to, what subjects I wanted to study, where I would go on my gap year, or what degree I would take at University. But unfortunately for me, that’s where the certainty stopped and I’m not enjoying the consequences.

Put simply, I just can’t decide what I want to do with the rest of my life. Beginning my final year at university, I’d really like to be able to say I have a plan, but I just can’t. When it comes to a decision about careers I feel remarkably like I’m stuck in a dark room with no likelihood of seeing the light any time soon, but knowing if I don’t find the light, I might be stuck there for a long time yet. Gloomy isn’t it?

Of course, I have had the odd eureka moment, when I’ve suddenly discovered my calling and started making plans for the future. ‘Odd’ being the operative word in that sentence, however. One eureka moment would be amazing, but when an entirely different light-bulb illuminates in my head two weeks later, totally casting the previous revelation into shadow as if it had just been a moment of madness, things suddenly become a lot less clear. The problem is, once you’ve overturned one idea, there’s never any certainty that you’re not going to change you’re mind again. A fear of not being able to fix on something creeps in and I start to feel that in a way it would be better to have no ideas at all, rather than the confusion that comes from yo-yoing between a collection of ten.

I often think I could have been more sensible. Degrees like medicine and law, these are subjects that can lead somewhere fairly obvious and well paid as long as you work hard. I study History, and I’m facing anything but the same sort of certainty. To make matters worse, we are constantly being bombarded by the television, radio and newspapers about how terrible the employment prospects of our generation are. So not only don’t I have any concrete ideas about what I want to do, there’s a good chance that when I do finally manage to fix on something, there won’t be any jobs available anyway. On top of that, whatever jobs there are will go to people who, unlike me, made their decision a long time ago and have filled every spare moment they have with relevant internships and work experience.

But then again, maybe I’m being a touch ridiculous, melodramatic even. I’m not the only one in this position afterall and life could be a lot worse! Besides, in some ways it is quite nice to be without a plan, to have those exciting choices still ahead of me. The world is my oyster and all that.

I’d just like my oyster to have a job offer clamped inside it, rather than a pearl. Then I’ll be happy…