Don’t get sucked into London after graduating from Ox

Living in London as a graduate often resembles Peep Show, apart from the fact Mark and Jeremy haven’t had to move further and further out each season, eventually ending up in the semi-mythical Zone 9. The day before I last left I took this picture, the scene a tableau of a lot of what is wrong.

This was on my way to Notting Hill Carnival, where the August Bank Holiday weather this year blessed the crowds with near-constant rain and cold. Its midday, so naturally the streetlights are already on. In the background luxury flats are going up, meaning higher rents for their foreign investor owners.

The yellow sign points to Westfield shopping centre, where you can spend money you probably don’t have in an authentically bland setting. The Storeys sign advertises yet another “Street Food, Art & Rooftop Bar”, a symptom of the current collective delusion which believes outdoor bars and food trucks work in a city that is a wet piss of greys 80 per cent of the time. They don’t. They are just cheaper rent-wise (see aforementioned luxury flats), yet the pop-up equals cool spin has worked. The sign reflects in the puddle with just enough beauty that some passing jeb end will soon Instagram it, and continue the cycle.

No rooftop street food pop ups here

Why stay? For jobs of course, and because nearly everyone you know has ended up there. If you sit on the tube for half-an-hour in the wrong direction after you finish work late in the evening you might be able to see them, even. I’m not going to disagree that London is where the jobs are – it’s just there are alternatives too. Alternatives which you hear less about at Oxford as they can’t pay for your free drinks at a LawSoc event.

For example, doing the OUIIP program gives you access to some pretty incredible opportunities abroad; I taught English at Tsing Hua University through it. Teaching as a second year was a pretty interesting challenge, considering my students were at China’s top university, with an admission rate of less than 0.5 per cent compared to Oxford’s 15-20 per cent. Once you’ve graduated, sites like Escape the City detail jobs that not only often pay well, but give you work far from the ordinary graduate traineeship role, whether it’s being part of an intense start-up or working abroad in an exotic location.

My couch-surf hosters in the Philippines

I’ve been travelling near constantly for a long-time, making money as I move to pay for it. It’s easier to do so than you’d think. When I am travelling, I make enough to cover it by matched betting. Occasionally taking residential tutoring jobs for high-paying agencies, who hire largely Oxbridge graduates, means I’m building my savings just as much as friends whose salaries are swallowed by London’s expenses. So far these have included spending weeks with families holidaying on the Sicilian Coast, or skiing in the Alps, tutoring a few hours daily.

Travelling a lot, one gradually finds tricks to keep costs down – by now I know the right places to keep track of deals, which for example now means I have upcoming return flights to Brazil for £180 to look forward to.

I’m one of those annoying ‘This is my office’ Facebook friends

Couchsurfing is fantastic for cheap travel too. The idea is simple – lovely people around the world put you up when you’re travelling around their countries, trying as best they can to be a good host, and you do the same when people visit your country. My group of friends hosted people in our staircase at Oxford, and it was a great way to connect with people from all over the world, who were pretty much always interesting types and good company. We’d take them to hall, and they’d love what for them was a pretty unique travel experience.

I’ve likewise been hosted in all corners of the world. I’ve been taken kayaking at midnight on a lake of phosphorescent plankton near Seattle, to a football match in Buenos Aires where the entire crowd smoked weed throughout the game, as alcohol was banned and to a family hog roast followed by karaoke with thirty fishermen in the Philippines. These are just a handful of examples. This was all free, and along the way you’ll be exposed to people living all kinds of alternative lifestyles – you may find you prefer them to the City. Get involved, and give back by hosting when you can too.

So don’t let deferred dreams explode. Think twice before swapping the Oxford bubble for a slightly larger one in which the wind still blows stale like the inside of a high street bank. You can always go back – London is as eternal as the FOMO which sustains it.