A lot of young people from the age of eighteen often ask themselves this question before entering what is supposedly meant to be the best three years of their life. The jump from the infamous ‘student life’ to the actual real world of work can almost seem quite daunting and challenging. “After the thrill and freshness of being a first year fresher and entering second year, it all becomes a lot more serious and intense. It’s as if you’re given the choice whether to fail or to succeed.” – a very serious viewpoint coming from Cambridge graduate Jen Holmes.
There seems to be a lot more to university life than just lecture halls and never ending deadlines. With the helpful emergence of graduate schemes and workshops, students get that extra push in finding where they want to be career-wise.
“It’s not a crime that I’m nineteen and have no clue what to do after I graduate” says Glen Harper, second year Mathematics student at Royal Holloway, University of London, which happens to be one of the many universities in London with a fantastic careers service. Websites such as milkround and secsinthecity specialise in the help and advice of jobs and internships from specific job roles just for university students, who can sign up to these sites for free and receive weekly job alert emails, with a specific criteria job-wise. Whether it is unpaid or not, it is still experience right? We are only young so it’s good to grab any experience possible.
I recently attended a fantastic Spring graduate fair at Senate house on Wednesday 20th March 2013, which was full of stands representing different job companies and organisations, and there to answer any question to the curious students shyly passing by. I came across a familiar logo, labelled NCTJ (The National Council for the Training of Journalists), which is an organisation based in Brighton, offering one of the best training schemes for budding journalists like myself.
All it took was an email. I then attended the graduate fair and left feeling even more decisive about where I’m going vocationally. The opportunities are there – are we afraid of where exactly we have to look first?