Liz's job log: 3
Liz Rawlins
- November 2008.
The story so far... Liz recently graduated from the University of Glamorgan with a degree in journalism. Aged 21 she is living in Barry, South Wales and working for a local insurance company.
The scare factor
Forget the ‘X factor’, being a recent graduate is like competing week-in week-out on the ‘Scare Factor’. My first ‘grown-up’ job is well under way and it’s a scary thing. I have left the lovely bubble of university life and have entered the world of employment - I feel I should state I was very comfortable in that bubble. But as you will know by now (I mention it quite regularly) student living must come to an end. Time to play grown-ups…
Do I have to be grown up now?
There were times during the four-week training where I felt I was back at school, but being used to the learning environment I think I got on a bit better than others who had been working for years. It may not seem it, but role-plays, presentations, tests and drawing a million posters for every subject covered can be quite intense! Fair play to our trainers though, they really tried (and succeeded) to make it as fun as possible. So, six weeks on and I’m attempting to put everything I’ve learnt into practice - the next few weeks are going to be the transition process from training to the real job, and without wanting to sound like a total defeatist, I feel it is not going to be easy. There is so much to constantly remember, and then when you do remember (and you give yourself a pat on the back) you realise you have no idea what you’re supposed to do next….
Friends?
Along with a new job, inevitably come new friends. Well, new people anyway - whether they become friends is an entirely different matter! Now, I like to think I’m a nice, approachable person, not overly confident about meeting new people but I’m not exactly shy and retiring either. Everything was rosy at first, fourteen of us training together - things were great! For the first day. Yes, call me fickle but after four weeks together all day, everyday, the cracks began showing. In fact if I’m brutally honest, pretty BIG cracks began showing. Yet I am told this is a part of life and part of ‘growing up’ - I thought I was grown up? I thought being older meant I did not have to humour those who I just don’t (and I’m being nice here) click with? Well, apparently not. There are plus points to this overload of new people though - you can see that everyone (well a vast majority) is in fact in the same position as you. I find it comforting - for want of a better word - that not everyone is here because their forte is in insurance, but that in the process of trying to get to wherever it is they want to be in a few years time, they too have found themselves doing something they had never considered before.
A to B
Myself not considering a job in insurance does by no means suggest that nobody else would consider this career path. If this were the case there wouldn’t be one-thousand-and-one insurance companies out there. I sometimes feel that I don’t give things a chance but I know that I am not looking to make this my life-long career - I know what career I want so why should I compromise? After all, our generation is not exactly familiar with the ‘job-for-life’ concept. My mum and dad have had the same career for their entire life - they are doing exactly what they trained to do, but unfortunately for me (and you) it’s not as simple as that anymore - there’s a lot more competition for the fewer and fewer jobs that we’re all looking for as graduates. It’s easy to think that if you’re in a job that you didn’t intend on being in, you’ve failed, but that’s not the case. It would be failure if you sat on your bum all day moaning about the fact that you still hadn’t landed your dream job, whereas Joe Bloggs from uni is on his way to being the next Bill Gates.
I’ve learnt I can’t keep comparing myself to fellow university leavers because there are always going to be those lucky few who seem to land on their feet after university (and it’s okay to hate them in secret). No one person has the same exact goals or ambitions so just be confident in your decisions, as I know too well that the slightest bit of doubt can hit you quite hard. It’s about getting from A to B - and if this means you have to go all the way to Z, stopping off at E and D in the mean time, so what?
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