The thoughts in most students minds while in University are usually that they will find lucrative job offers immediately upon completing. As a former student take it from me, I actually believed I would have companies and organisations lining up to take me aboard their money making ships.
You can imagine my surprise when I was suddenly thrown into the world of unemployed youth and Government Job freeze. A world where I keep reading about how 3000 youths apply for a job that is looking for ONLY22 people. How the Government let’s off 150 people because the Nation’s budget can not allow the pay of all of them. A world where every employer is only looking to hire someone who has 3-5 years work experience.
It makes me wonder exactly how one is supposed to get that work experience when no one is willing to hire them in the first place. Most people I know have at tops 6 months experience because of the various internships and industrial attachments they had. So are we going to forever be overlooked and left out because we are so fresh our of College that we don’t even know how much we are worth?
I had my graduation of the 24th of July, 2014 and at this point all I feel if fear. Fear that I may stay at home longer than I planned. Fear that my best years are passing by and that my once fresh and sponge like brain will dry up by the time someone decides to give me a chance to prove myself. So my “Best Graduating Student Award” hangs in my room and makes me laugh each time I look at it because it makes me think “what was the point of all that hard work and all the sweat if I am just going to spend my days at home?” Most of the people I talk to keep asking where it is that I am working and I guess it is coming as a shock to them when I explain that I am just at home, still living with my parents.
The biggest shock or let me say the thing that hurt the most is seeing people who graduated some 2 or 3 years earlier than me complaining about how they can not find employment in the country and how opportunities are not coming up. Most keep talking about the high levels of corruption and nepotism in the workplace and as I have no idea if it’s true or not I really can not comment about it.
But I have learnt quite a few things in my six months after writing my last University paper.
- Life isn’t as easy after University as most students imagine.
- You will regret wasting your student loan money on shoes and booze once you realise you should have been putting some into your savings account.
- Being the best graduating student doesn’t mean you will be the first person to get a job.
- The people everybody looked down on will most likely be the most successful.
- The Government doesn’t exactly have the best interest of everyone in mind. At times they just want to make themselves richer.
But maybe that is just me. I have a friend who believe that positivity and what you think you will get is most likely what the universe will give you. So as I lie here in my bed feeling a bit depressed and scared for my future, I will be positive and believe that I will get a 5 figure salary job and I will live in the city with the man of my dreams and my dream home…balcony, herb garden, garden swing and all.
I mean if we can’t even have part of the dream, what’s the point of even waking up in the morning right?
-Dee
The Beauty within 