Masters (&Commanders?)

The time has come. This is all I think of, lately. The time has come to go through university applications. Again. Applying for graduate courses just proves my whole argument about Peter Pan syndrome, doesn’t it? Why illude ourselves that we have finally reached adulthood, when the end of our university careers just brings back memories of “shit-what-have-I-been-doing-these-last-four-years-at-high-school?!”

 

I can only hope that we are all feeling the same way: absolutely thrown into the deep, and with the sudden realisation that our degrees do not fit in the cookie-mould job descriptions that the careers centre proudly shells out every day. I definitely cannot become a consultant at KPMG or a financial expert for some bank. Partly because of my degree, as well as my inability to do maths even if my life depended on it. Mostly because I wouldn’t last a day before losing absolutely all hope about humanity. In high-school, I toyed with the idea of becoming a poet/novelist and my friends made fun of me for it: my books would end up as the unwanted prize you find in cereal boxes (never Kellogg’s, but definitely Dorset Cereals) or as my fuel to survive the winter, rather than bestsellers. Needless to say, both those scenarios appeal to me more than becoming a blood-sucking, corporate, tailleur-wearing robot.

 

I know what I don’t want to do, and despite this abominable cliché, the question still remains: what will I do? So many options, and one more idealistic (and improbable) than the other. It possibly doesn’t help that I have friends that are undecided between a Masters or going to a Buddhist retreat for a year or teach English in Japan/Madagascar/Argentina or rule the planet. Doesn’t help either that I live with a future Oxbridge PhD candidate, and that I don’t have the most remote idea where I want to set up camp (some days, Barcelona, other days, middle-fuck-nowhere Mexico, or Edinburgh, or New York, or…). The dilemmas remain, and keep piling up.

 

Of course, I have indeed (somewhat) narrowed it down, and I am going through with my plan. Now, it’s just about the pain of waiting, all over again. Not only for acceptance letters, but for my grades, again. You know what module they should offer all fourth years? YOU101: Getting life started, and making it awesome.