Our government has no means for helping middle class people. No offers, no aid. I know this sounds like ridiculous whinings of a bourgeois, but it's true. When the disenfranchised fall out of education, they fall into an environment which is geared to help them specifically. To get them onto courses, to get them into employment; to help them stay there. This is of course a good thing. But there are no resources in place to help students and graduates, no one to make sure that they can get by. There is a persistent and false belief that people graduate from university and fall into work. There are preconceptions, misconceptions and downright mistakes floating around the employment world. I suffer because people assume that I won't stick their crappy jobs because I have a degree in literature. Well that's just not true. I want their jobs because it gives me the chance to carry on studying. I am not going anywhere. Their job is so valuable whether it is scrubbing pots, selling phones or coffee or books, or cleaning bedrooms.
Another major misconception is that experience is more important than intelligence. To think of one example, I was working in a kitchen last week and was asked to unlink sausages. The chef asked me if I was "knife trained". I got taught how to use a knife at GCSE, and how to open boxes in a book shop. But because I was not chef trained it seems as though I am unqualified. I chop onions, unlink sausages and carve chickens all the time. Thankfully he did give me the knife and let me get on with it. No fingers were lost or cuts sustained; surprisingly. I understand that it stems back to a fear of getting sued. "Untrained woman cuts off own arm with knife whilst trying to unlink sausages." But this culture of fear is utterly ridiculous. Intelligence needs to be recognised as something as useful to a business as experience and the ability to follow orders.
Job interviews: I have had five or six so far, and they have mostly been ok. Not good enough to get me real work obviously, but ok. By far my favourite type is the kind where they ask standard questions about your past. i.e. describe a time when your enthusiasm paid off. Describe a time when you were to blame. etc. These questions are nonsense, they are neither insightful nor useful because the answers you are receiving will be lies. Not necessarily whole lies. Just twisted little truths. I like these interviews because there emphasis is on how a person can analyse their own experiences: which I can do very well. Responses can be easily manipulated.
The worst kind of interview is where the majority of the time is spent describing the job and how oh so difficult it would be. These are not interviews at all. Once you get into this situation, of being forcibly dissuaded from the role the interviewer has already decided you are unfit and is outlining all the ways in which it would be too hard for you. "The level of cleaning has to be much higher than what you might do at home." "It's a busy retail environment and you will have to be able to do two things at once." "You will be required to where a Peter Rabbit uniform... oh you think that's cute, well it is boiling hot inside." Your cries of "I can do that" go unheard. You are inexperienced, lazy, too short. But the reality is I can do these things. I can get to work on time. I freaking well can do two things at once, I have a degree from one of the top ten universities in the country. I can even manage to put on a bunny suit and look fun.
Mostly this occurs not with the more difficult jobs but with the simpler ones. When I turned up for a days work in a kitchen the woman who'd called the agency looked distressed when she discovered I hadn't worked in a "real" kitchen before. I was nonetheless very successful. Two of the jobs I have not managed to be hired for I think are the result of being too middle class. Too qualified. They imagine that a lovelier better swankier job will suddenly come up and I will put down the mop and rush off to be a receptionist or a retail assistant.
I find myself wading through a sea of forms. Looking for work in a proactive way is essentially the same as having full time administrative work. Daily data entry, telephone conversations and print outs. I'm running a mini-business from my bedroom but unfortunately there's no money to be had in it.
At the back of my mind in all of this is how horrifically messed up my life is because instead of pursuing the sciences: subjects I was very apt and had potential in. I plumped for arts subjects. If five years ago someone had told me this would be the end result. Perhaps I would have directed my studies a different way. Perhaps not; I was a stubborn child. Although it may not have helped me permanently at least I would have had the opportunity to carry on at university, at least for another year. As I find myself reading more and more science literature, I wonder if physics would have been a better choice. I am frustrated that I am being made to feel this way by a government which does not value education nearly as much as it pretends. A government which has completely devalued our degrees, and now leaves me on the brink of being unable to afford a house; let alone lurpak.
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