Anyone who has ever harboured designs at a creative career knows the underlying anxiety woven into talk of careers and jobs in the industry, where the odds for the lottery of ‘big breaks’ can often seem distressingly bad. Worst of all, perhaps, is the secret fear of all self-consciously arty people approaching the end of their university careers: being called a sellout. There is no integrity, we are told, in compromising your creative self for the security a cubicle and salary can provide.

The shame of selling out stems from the increased existential weight a job must now carry. It is like an identity – it is something we need to feel a connection to, something fulfilling and meaningful. The prevailing narrative is one akin to finding your soulmate. We don’t just want a pay-cheque – we want a calling. This isn’t just an annoying peculiarity of our generation, however, it’s a product of the age in which we live: a world that is more socially mobile than ever and an internet that has given us access to millions of possibilities. Young people today have the capacity to imagine a vast array of different outcomes for their lives. We’ve seen what the world can offer us, and now we are demanding more.

“The idea that we can all have jobs which are our callings is marred by the existence of inequality and privilege, especially for women, people of colour, and those who can’t afford it.”

At first it seems like the menu of choices has been extended for people of our generation but we’ve been sold a lie. The idea that we can all have jobs which are our callings is marred by the existence of inequality and privilege, especially for women, people of colour, and those who can’t afford it. The world is as economically deterministic as ever, and the equation of a career with fulfilment can lead to unnecessary guilt and grief for those for whom fulfilling careers are financially unviable. In many creative industries, unpaid internships are the best, if not the only, way to get your foot in the door to a job. Paying to live in expensive cultural hubs  like London and New York to work for nothing but the chance to add a line to your CV might not be an option – at least not when the rent is due.

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The rampant problems with representation of gender, race and disability in creative industries are by themselves enough to turn aspiring artists towards more conservative career choices. A media which can’t seem to find any East Asian actors to put in starring roles seems a risky choice for a Japanese actor. It comes down to one of the realities of living life as a marginalised person: the painful contortions to fit into the limited social space you have been allotted. Of course there is the impulse to brave the headwinds and try to improve representation, but the intense emotional labour that goes into that sort of struggle isn’t something we should expect or normalise for marginalised people.

The disdain with which some view ‘selling out’ and the corporate world comes from the misconception that we all start out with the same privilege of being able to pursue dreams that require a lot of start-up capital. It’s true that the financial rewards of a high-flying corporate career attract many students at this university – money has manufactured a certain prestige for the corporate world. Companies hire students as campus brand ambassadors to make sure their message and logo reach as many eyes as possible, and we’re told that corporate careers are just the thing for ambitious, talented young people. But there is also the pessimistic thought that many would-be creatives are more willing to hedge their bets in a boardroom with a glass ceiling and relative stability than out in the wilderness of a fickle, impenetrable creative industry. Without better access to creative industries, we could be missing out on the art of huge, culturally rich populations.

Selling out isn’t always the scourge. Sometimes it’s the reaction to one. It means hustling and working hard to make a life work in an unequal society. Even though it might be better not to ascribe the whole weight of your life’s fulfilment on your nine-to-five, we should try for a world in which we all have the luxury of doing jobs we love. Until then, we would do well to consider that the privilege of not ‘selling out’ is not afforded to every student equally