Corporate stash is stealing our souls

At school I did my best to fit in, and that didn’t require much self­-exploration.  At university, I am a blank, impressionable canvas. An open word document, ready for the ever­-tapping fingers of influence that populate any campus.

I receive weekly emails about Korfball and Whisky Tasting because of brightly-coloured stands and whitely-­toothed faces. I tentatively attend a college drinking society, because of a six foot two third year with a tie, a pint and a girlfriend. I enjoy Brecht and techno and student journalism and college politics.

He loves Centrica

I am not faking it. Honestly, I’m not. It’s just the inevitable and invasive impact of everything we are exposed to. Nor am I unusual, I am simply the predictable result of  my surroundings.

I will have finished university before my 21st birthday. I hope to have a graduate scheme organised before my 20th.

Does this remind you of anyone? This is precisely why we should fear mugs. And pens. And free notepads. Just as Derren Brown can make you want a BMX just by dropping the letters B, M and X into conversation, our city, and the letters that litter it, have a scary amount of power over us.

Property of Thomson Reuters

Free food at cafés courtesy of Deutsche Bank, free drinks at bars courtesy of Clifford Chance. I have even seen a Teddy Bear with the name of a Magic Circle law firm stitched into its stomach, thanks to the surgical meddling of a modern-­day Dr Frankenstein.

We the people, we the paper­-users, we the pen­-needers, we the clothes­wearers, we the soft-­toy­-cuddling infants. A ubiquitous campaign has permeated our daily environment ­ a campaign to rehabilitate and soften the public perception of superpowerful corporations, a campaign to ensure that we accept them as essential, and our servile jobs there as both inevitable and desirable. And we barely even notice its presence.

Cash for souls

After all, this is a university where first ­year students are relocated mid-exams so that their beds might be given to visiting businessmen, where college staff are made to work unpaid overtime to prepare rooms for conferences. This is a university where, if you go to the Careers Department to see if they have any suggestions about charity work in Francophone Africa during your year abroad, you will still somehow leave with the Times 100.

By virtue of our overblown and bizarrely mythologised education, we have the privilege of choice. We can, to a far greater extent than 95% of the population, choose our careers. Let’s not waste this. Let’s not be rushed by fears of an uncertain future.

And, above all, let’s not get jobs we hate because of a mug and a free poppyseed muffin.