Still plugging away

Equipped with excellent experience, Su Crust is still struggling against exasperating obstacles to overcome a third class honours degree.

I graduated in 1999 with a degree in English Language, Linguistics and Educational Studies from Lancaster University, having suffered a catastrophic bout of glandular fever which floored me for well over six months during my second year.

Despite putting in all the necessary appeals to claw back some of my coursework marks and working very hard to improve the situation with little support, the damage was done. With the help of the Educational Studies Department, who were amazing, I fought tooth and nail to keep going, showed resilience, adaptability, determination under pressure, and plenty of persistence, which paid off when I finally finished my course and graduated with the rest of my class.

I was not defeatist as I could have been - it would have been the easiest thing in the world (and cheaper!) for me to have given up and got myself a dead-end job, on to a Modern Apprenticeship or something similar. Had I chosen the Modern Apprenticeship, I could have potentially been earning £30k as a PA to a blue-chip company by now.

QUALITY EXPERIENCE

I had plenty of experience at uni: as secretary to the women’s rugby club, in the uni Choral Society and article writer for the uni newspaper, as well as vacation jobs at home including waitressing, supervisory cashier and playworker in a children's playcentre.

When I graduated, I took a year out and raised £5k in five months for charity, and trekked to the Base Camp of Mount Everest (with all the hard work and organisation that entails, not to mention teamwork). Since then, I have had a job as a receptionist, been a nightclub manager for four years (with all the admin, anti-social hours and associated stress that entails) and a cashier on a fairground. Thankfully, my local grammar school saved my sanity, and I am now a school Librarian.

THOSE WHO CAN, TEACH

Now to the exasperating experience bit - I am now applying for a PGCE to teach secondary school children, in an attempt to stay in the subject I love and try and access some of the earning potential that everyone told me I'd have if I went to university (since being a school librarian pays just enough for a pint and packet of pork scratchings on a Friday night).

I have racked up at least three years’ total experience within education (two years here and one year’s total classroom assistant experience at other schools over the last ten years or so) and I also come from a family of teachers, so I’m fully aware of the teaching workload. Imagine my horror when I now find myself in the position that I have been rejected from seven institutions in the last six months.

The fact that I have a degree seems to count for nothing, despite the personal strength, resilience and determination I showed to get it.

THEY WANT QUALITIES?

We are always being told these days that employers are looking for personal qualities - ie flexibility, adaptability, organisation, performance under pressure, stress management, strong communication and interpersonal skills, oh and let’s not forget experience. But I have found myself time and time again hitting a dead end, not through a lack of ability aptitude or intelligence, but because of the number on my degree certificate; and all because I contracted glandular fever in my second year.

Now, like so many graduates, I am in a job for which I didn't need to get a degree (and a fat lot of debt) for and is nowhere close to my earning potential. At this rate, I shall be able to defer my student loan repayments for life, and never have a job worthy of my earning potential, which is not what I signed up to uni for.

I am exasperated. I feel cheated, a thoroughly fed up graduate - and I can't afford to pay for a postgraduate course anytime soon. I've taken all the advice I can get my hands on about interview technique, personal statements, application writing, career goals, been on all the websites, you name it, I’ve done it.

The worst bit of all is that I bet I’m not the only one who feels like this or that is in the same position. I shall continue to keep plugging away because that’s the only thing I can do..... what other option do I have?

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