just alisha things

I woke up on the morning on my graduation full of excitement and anticipation. The day had arrived that I’d been working towards for god knows how long, and the freedom I had itched for was about to land in the palm of my hands. I felt like the world was my oyster and so many opportunities were waiting for me out there once I was free from the constraints of university. No more 9am lectures, leaving myself 13 hours to do a 3000 word essay or living in the library. With all this hope and optimism for the future, maybe it was only natural that in reality, I’d fall flat on my face once the comfort blanket of university was pulled from beneath me.

Fast forward a year and a half later and I can whole heartedly say that graduating from university was the biggest anti-climax I have ever experienced. I rode the wave of feeling proud of myself for about a month before my mood started to nosedive and I started asking myself “what now?” I’d spent the majority of my life gearing up to be a graduate and to have that prestigious scroll in my grip, only for application after application to be rejected or go unanswered. By September the societal pressure and expectation to land an impressive job was breathing down my neck, and the truth is I didn’t even know what this “dream job” was anymore. I wanted to be a journalist throughout my degree before I had the revelation in my final year that I didn’t want to do that anymore, but I couldn’t quite place my finger on exactly what I wanted to do. I was accepted for three wildly different Masters courses, and found myself not really wanting to do any of them enough to go through with one. So instead of dipping my toes into the working world, I spent my first few months of being a graduate eating my feelings and watching through Glee to cling on to the remnants of my adolescence.

Nineteen years of education, friends and routine had culminated in a complete loss of structure and purpose. I felt like I was in a thick, grey blanket of the unknown and I questioned why I’d even done a degree. Not only that, but the dark cloud of student debt hanging over my head paired with the fact I no longer had a loan to support my finances plagued my mind every day. I’d stare at the daunting figure on my overdraft wondering how the hell I was ever going to pay it back. “Is this life then?” I wondered, “am I now just sentenced to worrying about money until the day I die?” After years of working hard, making friends, having fun and adjusting to a new life in Belfast, my life was changing all over again and I had no sense of belonging.

If all of this wasn’t demoralising enough, I also fell into the trap of comparing myself to my friends and the other people I’d graduated with. It’s almost impossible not to when everybody is so visible on social media. To this day I can’t even open LinkedIn without coming off it severely depressed. All those posts that started with “I’m so excited to announce…” and “Congratulate ____ on their new job update” left me simmering in my bitterness for the rest of the day no matter how hard I tried to pull myself out of it.

Then, almost out of nowhere, I landed a job in the fundraising department of a national charity. I can’t even describe the relief I was granted just to have income, and I was excited to start applying my skills and using my brain again. However, adjusting to 9-5 life aside, I found it just as hard being in employment than I did being out of it. I felt young and inexperienced and struggling to establish myself, constantly feeling like I was out of my depth. As well as that, no matter how grateful I was just to have a job, I knew my heart wasn’t really in it and I ached to do something more creative. I surrendered to the fate that to find my dream job, I’d probably end up crossing off what I didn’t want to do, job after job, rather than suddenly being hit with the realisation of what it was. Then, after nearly a year, I lost my job during the pandemic and was back to where I’d started all those months ago.

The difference was that now there was a whole new generation of graduates to compete with. I couldn’t really even class myself as a “graduate” anymore because it’d been over a year since I’d left university. A lot of my friends had come out of the transition period now and were well into their new ventures, and I felt lonelier than ever. It feels like everyone is driving past you and you’re stuck on the side of the road, walking into an unknown fate trying to flag someone down. Not forgetting that by this stage we were living in a completely different world due to the pandemic and I’d lost contact with so many of the friends I’d made at university. So the cycle of self loathing and post-graduate depression kicked off again and I was desperate to wake up one day and be in a different headspace. I was yearning to be utilised, to be achieving and to feel productive and valuable. I’d even look back at my old essay and project feedback from university to feel better and reminisce about the times I was being celebrated. Confession: I last did this only a couple of weeks ago.

Anyway, I’ve tried to go into 2021 with a different outlook. I know that my value and worth doesn’t solely rest on my productivity levels and feeding into the economy. I know that I’m still young and I don’t need to know what I want to do for the rest of my life just yet. I know that I’m not alone in this situation. At the moment I’m working in a supermarket to keep a roof over my head and to keep paying off my overdraft (albeit very slowly). Even a job I never envisioned myself doing has taught me a lot of lessons about life and about myself. I work with some of the nicest, smartest and funniest people I’ve ever met that are from all different walks of life. I still don’t really know what the future holds for me but I know there are a million and one things I can do and I don’t want to be boxed into having one career for the rest of my life. I’m starting to realise that it’s okay to float for a bit and just live each day as it comes. Afterall, I’m not sinking while I’m floating. (Might frame that).