The University Void. Graduate Blues.
Call it what you want, I’m feeling it. And I think a lot of us are.
It’s hard to think about the rest of your life when you’ve only just come to terms with living away from your parents and suddenly the nice three year plan has dwindled out. You’re spat out the other side of a degree with a piece of paper proclaiming you’re intelligent, a lot of fading specialist knowledge, and a rag tag bunch of individuals you’ve collected over the years and come to call friends.
There are various trajectories people seem to take. One: straight into an incredibly high paying and competitive grad scheme. Two: cling to the higher education vessel and sail on straight to a masters. Three: get a mediocre job to fill the gap until something better comes along.
I’m the latter category – having been robbed of much of the university life by the pandemic I opted to sign onto a house with my best friend and remain in Sheffield, the city that I so resented as an 18 year old and now find impossible to leave as a 21 year old. I picked up more hours at my mentally un-taxing pub job to pay the summer rent and am currently idling.
I often feel like I’m a car left in gear; I’m so ready and ambitious to sink my teeth into what comes next but the handbrake is on. I can’t seem to move forwards because I feel so demotivated and demoralised by the state of the job market at the moment. I feel like I’m owed so much ‘fun’ and yet I’m reluctant to cash in on it because I’m convinced its already too late and I have to get my life sorted now now NOW-
I’m caught between the advice of ‘carpe diem’ and ‘you’re still young’.
I’m desperate to take the next step and I’m not sure I’m giving myself the time to be messy and catch up on the uni ‘banter’ I lost out on due to being essentially locked up for the best part of 18 months.
I am majorly uptight; I’ve always been so. I’m a control freak with a superiority complex because I appear to have my life together (mostly), worked a part-time job for most of my degree whilst also balancing several extracurricular activities and fulfilling social life. I was always the smart, bookish one who grafted and grafted, and it paid off at uni. But now I’m not at uni. The need to prove myself subsists, but the only person really grading me is myself.
Now I really really want to secure that step into real adult hood, where I get the nice office job and steady income that allows me to shop beyond the Aldi essentials range of tinned tomatoes.
But I can’t help thinking I’m living a life too early?
Is 21 really the age to settle down and spend your Sunday evenings watching Line of Duty and meal planning for the next week? To be in bed at 10pm and awake for 8 the next day ready for your morning routine of yoga?
It’s hard to let go; I find it hard to ‘go with the flow’. The days I do spend dying of a hangover and lying around listlessly only serve to drive me into a cycle of embarrassment and self-hatred. I can never win or seem to balance being fun and being sensible. I’m toeing the line between complete party girl or repressed miser.
Maybe I am too boring. Maybe I’m charading as an ‘adult’ - whatever that means – to ignore the fact that a lot of my carefree years are behind me and I have nothing to show for it. Perhaps I am reaching out for the Next Step out of sheer fear of letting things be. Of seeing what happens. I don’t trust anything to happen that isn’t hand steered by yours truly.
I’m struggling to cope with the massive void left behind by the end of structured university life. My life is now my own, and I don’t know what to do with it.
I asked several graduate peers to share their own experiences of teetering on the edge of the University Void.
Not only is the end of university as disorientating as it is in normal times, but the classes of 2020 and 2021 are also dealing with the fall out of the COVID-19 pandemic. The world was essentially put on hold for a year. Independent start ups and corporate giants collapsed alike and the job market is a cataclysmic train wreck. Many graduate schemes and internships were dissolved, with companies just not having the funding or company space to take on new ambitious employees.
Let alone attempting to get a job involved with the field of study you’ve finished, trying to get a job pouring pints or making coffee is difficult enough. A manager at work told me only last week that a CV of a PhD graduate had been handed in looking for work at the pub.
The market is flush with over-educated young people desperate to make a living – whether its degree related or simply to pay rent. And there is no guarantee that you will keep that job anyway, with the fear of sudden redundancy greater than ever as companies are forced to downsize.
50% of my respondents reported ‘experiencing a loss of direction, motivation, and feelings of listlessness’ and general dissatisfaction with current life and a lack of ambition to move onwards.
One replied that post-graduation, they felt ‘unmotivated’ and ‘had no idea what to do further with [their] life’, another reporting they struggled with the massive life changes of post uni life, now faced with ‘different support systems and people’. It’s a massive culture shock no longer being surrounded by the familiar faces of uni classmates, especially if you are plunged straight into a new work place or relocate back home.
However, one respondent made the excellent point that despite everything changing, ‘it isn’t just pandemic related’ - ending these three years was going to feel horrible and weird no matter when it happened. I just can’t help feeling like being isolated from a university setting and finishing your degree from your bedroom only exacerbates feelings of un-belonging and stability. There’s no cosy timetable of classes and assignments to at least give the illusion on control. It’s just you, your computer, and the oppressive sense of ‘I really should be doing something.’
Then its all over, last assignment is handed in and you log off and go watch an episode of Come Dine With Me.
Others spoke of feeling ‘imposter syndrome’ - the sensation of inadequacy and self doubt - and an ‘inability to live up to [their] degree’. Despite having post-graduation plans, they said ‘it still [felt] like the real world will be creeping up soon’. As if no matter how prepared you are, adulthood is going to come and tug the rug out from under your feet.
100% reported that graduating had affected their mental health, with responses showing recurring themes of rushed and anti-climactic ends to their degrees, stating that they experienced ‘moments of disconnect because it was suddenly all over’ and COVID-19 restrictions curtailing celebrations meant the end of the degree felt ‘anticlimactic and kind of like a waste of time.’
Remote learning and working is chronically isolating, destroying so many chances to make meaningful connections with people when your only interaction is through a screen. It's harder to make friends, network, difficult to get the opportunities you would normally.
Only 25% of respondents said they were currently working a job that made them feel fulfilled or felt relevant to their future career plans. My current work in a pub provides me with a good routine and allows me to be sociable with a massive range of people. If anything, it’s given me some absolutely insane stories. But I also feel my soul sucked away every hour I spend there, that every pint poured is a wasted moment that I could be doing something more important and self-fulfilling.
One respondent said working an unrelated job to their degree has resulted in ‘a lot of questions asked about my “plan” or my future and it’s only then that I start to feel down or anxious about being a graduate.’
It is not only internal pressure on graduates to make their £27000 debt seem worth it, but the pressures of those surrounding and ‘supporting’. The well-meaning question of ‘so, what are your plans for later?’ is a sure-fire way to send a disorientated youth into a tailspin of guilt and confusion. We don’t know! Stop asking us! Argh!
A few people had more positive things to say about the effect of COVID on their end of university experience. In a very bitter article I published last year, I discussed how the limitations of no social life pushed me to perform better than I ever had on my degree coursework. It wasn’t that I forgave the world for taking so much passion from me, but the results I worked hard for encouraged me to reach deeper into my reserves of self-determination and commitment than I ever had before.
One respondent had a similarly optimistic reaction to the pandemic’s effect:
‘One good thing the early pandemic did for me personally as a student was to force me to re-evaluate what I want out of life after uni and stop giving in to external pressures to get onto internships/work experience for jobs I have no interest in.’
They also spoke that the ‘brakes’ that the pandemic applied took the pressure off and allowed them view their degree in a more relaxed mindset. The pandemic offered a realisation that there is a life beyond university – a chance to take a moment to stop and think and actively consider what it is we want from life. Are you just applying for that internship to go through the motions or because you wholeheartedly want it? I certainly did - I realised that I didn’t want to jump head first into a PGCE and start teaching straight after uni. It’s scary for your plans to suddenly rearrange and disintegrate in front of you, but a relief to know you're not forcing yourself into a path you know won’t make you happy.
There was one response that I felt really summed up the sensation of being left in the lurch in such a critical point of life – of essentially being tripped up whilst crossing the threshold of adulthood.
‘I also feel like I missed on a big opportunity to grow - growing doesn’t come naturally when you’re spending 24/7 in your childhood bedroom; leaving uni is definitely not bittersweet as pre-covid grads say, it’s just plain bitter when you think of what could have been. ‘
Bitter is the perfect word to end this piece. I am bitter. We are bitter. We’ve had our worlds turned upside down and are being chucked out by an institution that’s offering little support, to flounder in a world that’s vastly changed from the one we were primed to enter since primary school.
Can you blame us all for turning to Tiktok and dyeing our hair weird colours to cope? Thinking of all the friends, jobs, opportunities and experiences that we were denied.
But perhaps I should let go of this too; clinging onto ‘what ifs’ whilst being desperately afraid of moving in any direction?
Perhaps, for once in our lives, we all need to just go with the flow.