Ayeesha's job log: 1

After graduating last year, Ayeesha Shahani found it difficult to make the next move.

My first blog

Having only recently discovered what a ‘blog’ was, I volunteered to write this blog so I could keep track of what I have done, what I set out to do and what I eventually achieve.

I will be keeping you posted on my personal job hunt detailing how I progress. When entering the job market for the first time, I feel that discussing the general emotional ups and downs of finding your feet is just as important as learning all there is to know about CVs, cover letters and interviews. You never know, reading my journey might save you making common mistakes later on, or maybe, it might just make you feel like you are not alone.

Who am I?

Although I was born in India, I grew up in Hong Kong and I went to school there for 12 years before deciding to come to England to study a BSc in Psychology and Social Anthropology.

Like a lot of other 23-year-old graduates out there in unemploymentville, I am confused with what to do with my life. I sometimes feel myself going round in circles when making the career decisions that ultimately affect my future. If I could just decide on a career, I could then devote all my efforts night and day to making it happen. But in a world where you are brought up to believe ‘You can be anything you want to be’, when the world is literally your oyster, how do you decide on just one thing?!

My biggest problem when it comes to choosing a career path is that I have far too many passions. I enjoy painting, drawing, cooking, dancing basically everything expressive or creative. I’m a budding environmentalist (even co-founded a Green Society at Uni). I adore kids and find their frank personalities and insatiably curious minds simply captivating. I write compulsively and dream of publishing a million books on a million topics. I love reading, researching and learning new things. Like all Anthropologists, I love travelling, meeting new people and exploring different cultures and languages.

So what's my problem? My problem is that all of these (plus my other interests, ideas and dreams yet to come) can all be satisfied by one job or another, BUT no one job can satisfy all of them.

I confidently approached the job market in September 2007 (after my post-graduation celebratory summer holiday). Armed with my First class degree I just assumed all doors would open for me, but they didn’t. Mainly because I wasn’t entirely sure which doors I should be knocking on in the first place! Terrified that I would apply for a job, actually get it and then be stuck in it for the rest of my life, it became apparent that I no longer knew what I wanted to be. There was too much choice!

How did this happen? Why was I so confused? I came out of university feeling all clever because I had studied everything from cerebral lateralization to modern day witchcraft. However the truth was that although my thirst for obscure knowledge about human beings had grown, I hadn’t got a clue as to how I was supposed to make money out of a passion for academia! Being unable to immediately dish out the exorbitant international fees for a Postgraduate course, I started to panic and wondered how on earth I was going to survive.

Migrating North

Confused and lost I decided to take some time out to think about what I wanted and I moved in with my boyfriend (lawyer in training) who still had one more year of university in Newcastle. Fortunately for me, he owned the house he lived in and so I figured my expenses would be relatively low and I could spend my days exploring different careers and searching for my dream job. Perhaps I’d develop my academic career by getting a job as a research assistant. As weeks went by with no apparitions as to what my calling in life was, nothing seemed to be going according to plan. Research positions were few and far between and whenever one came along, the competition was fierce.

If not research what was I going to do? I needed a job and quick, money was low. It was time to temp. So the next plan of action was to work whilst waiting for research jobs to become available. I had to keep busy and avoid getting used to a lax lifestyle. I figured I’d temp 9-5, save some money, and spend my evenings looking for a job I really wanted. Well, that was the plan…

Failure

After being rejected from various secretarial/admin positions because I was and I quote ‘overqualified and probably unlikely to stick around that long’, I eventually found a job as a bartender in a local nightclub. The minimum wage I received in no way compensated me for the horrors I experience in that job. I tolerated heavy metal music at Goth Night, drunken students vomiting and teenagers doing ‘tequila suicides’ (booze/lime in the eye and sniffing the salt). As if that wasn’t masochistic enough, I worked in a pub too. Coming home at 3:30am and going to work at 1pm the next day meant that my body clock was destroyed. Any time off was spent sleeping or eating, by this point I could barely remember my own name. I gave up after five long weeks of torture. Feeling defeated, I went to India for six weeks to my grandmother’s house, in desperate need of pampering.

Now...

It has been four months since I returned from India and restarted my job hunt. I am still unemployed.

It has been eight months since I first began the search for my dream career. I am still unsure.

But only one month ago did it finally hit me that your first job doesn’t have to be your last, that I don’t have to hang my life’s future happiness on ONE career path because if I don’t like it, I have the power to change it.

So now, with a little bit of courage and a lot of blind faith… the real search begins....

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