Why I’m not applying for grad schemes…

Flo Perry explains why she won’t be applying for a grad scheme anytime soon and wonders if there isn’t another way?

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I’m a fourth year, so I’m in my second year of hearing people moan about applications to grad schemes. Some of my friends even have jobs now! It’s terrifying.

People who a mere 6 months ago were downing quaddies and being sick over Elvet Bridge are now downing champagne and being sick off The Millennium Bridge, oh and they are attempting to help run our economy.

I know people who are determined to get a city job. They crave the high flying life, the power, the money and they seem to actually be interested in business. I also know people who have been sent their graduation date and gone into a flurry of panic about what to do with the rest of their lives and are applying randomly to city jobs.

We are in the prime of our life, our early twenties, so why are people selling their soul to the corporate world?

An ancient Chinese philosophy lecturer at Harvard shares my point of view, he says career driven students “are not paying enough attention to the daily things that actually invigorate and inspire them, out of which could come a really fulfilling, exciting life,” he explains.

“If what excites a student is not the same as what he has decided is best for him, he becomes trapped on a misguided path, slated to begin an unfulfilling career.”

Cue panic, stress and possible alopecia

Of course this is easy for me to preach, my parents are happy to have me back home next year, and as they live in central London and I’m quite happy to live with them until I find something that invigorates and inspires me.

But there must be another way. Not everyone who has moved away from home works as a management consultant!

You don’t have to move to London, I know of a pair of graduates that have jumped the nest and moved to Brighton, on a whim, and they’re scraping it by on minimum wage jobs while looking for something more permanent.

Their flat sounds great… “our flat is breaking already – the lights in half the house don’t work, there’s a gap between the window and wall letting air in just above a radiator”, but at least their still living the student lifestyle soles intact.

There must be more to our lives than that piece of paper…

I asked a friend in a real life banker training program what their life is like: “now whenever I see someone not in a suit on the Underground I start to worry about the £200 in notes in my wallet. It’s not so much that they’re probably going to steal it and spend it on working-class past-times, it’s just I won’t have anything to snort my coke with.”

Is that evidence that the corporate world has sucked their soul away, or is it a lifestyle that appeals to you. If so, go forth and fill in those online applications, have those phone interviews, face to face interviews, assessment centres and live that coke fuelled and morally dubious lifestyle.