You know the scene in Harry Potter where Hogwarts Express is infiltrated by Death Eaters? Well, that’s how I feel about Cambridge every autumn when invitations to corporate recruitment events hit my inbox. Year after year, I watch friends abandon their dreams of becoming the next Chomsky/Sylvia Plath/Hugh Grant Notting Hill and switch poetry evenings for drinks with Deloitte. But I stay strong (for the most part – Origami Energy did provide me with a sizeable mug, and my shopping goes into a tote bag advertising one consultancy firm or another): I huddle up with a cup of green tea and fluffy socks – every little counts when you’re fighting big corporations – and spend my time planning the menu for my future one-woman vegan café (cinnamon buns and sticky toffee pudding will be the highlights; think IKEA meets Mary Berry), holding onto my dear soul.

“Finding fulfilment in life is not the same as what you do in your daily job. Yet equating corporate careers with selling your soul is based on exactly this assumption.”

Yet, deep down, and increasingly so with every cohort of emails that I get, I know that I’ve got some kind of a Peter Pan syndrome going on here, and that I am, ultimately, wrong in my deadly fear of selling my soul to corporate jobs.

The thing is – dare I admit it – I known people who’ve graduated and gone to corporate jobs. Quite shockingly, most of them still seem to have their souls intact (okay, some of them are about as soulful as Angela Merkel’s dress sense, but I’m pretty sure they were already a bit lacking in that department). Even more shockingly, many of them actually enjoy their corporate job. Things like problem solving, managing everything from people to numbers, and research feature prominently in corporate job descriptions, and as a self-confessed nerd, I can see how there is fulfilment to be found in that. Combine that with the not-very-artsy-but-definitely-functional office environment, Thursday night drinks, team lunches, and trips to mud obstacle races or what have you for team building, plus a solid income (thanks for paying for my dinners, everyone!), and I’m starting to wonder where the soullessness idea is coming from.

Just as we demonise corporate jobs, we romanticise the non-corporate life: who doesn’t love Sebastian in La La Land for making his independent jazz café dream come true (especially with those Ryan Gosling looks), and I, too, worship at the altar of the Notting Hill bookshop. I have a very clear vision of life at my vegan establishment: my days will be spent happily baking away in my cinnamon-infused kitchen, being best friends with my customers, posting pictures of chia-goji-almond butter porridge on Instagram and trending on #vegansofig. Oh and did I mention, I’d also have plenty of time for my column in the Observer?

Sadly, I need to keep reminding myself that there’s more to the life of an entrepreneur than hugging trees and loving cows: hello endless risk assessments, bulk batch purchase orders, hygiene certificates, P-whatever employment forms, and tax refunds. If hurdling over bureaucracy in the solitude that this private entrepreneurship isn’t not soul-destroying, then I’m not sure what is.

As bizarre as it may sound to some, finding fulfilment in life is not the same as what you do in your daily job. Yet equating corporate careers with selling your soul is based on exactly this assumption: work is life and life is work, and if your work happens to be in a sterile office of a big firm, well, then your inner life must be as sterile as your desk.

The thing is, no matter how fulfilling and meaningful my café will be, I have aspirations in life beyond the IKEA-vegan fusion. There’s a dress in Ted Baker that would go really well for John’s May Ball – I mean it would be stupid not to exercise my right to alumni tickets worth £395 every year, right? But, as painful it is to admit this, I’m starting to think that IT consultancy might just be a safer option to secure the tickets and haute couture than rolling out cinnamon buns made out of almond milk. Who is soulless and boring now? The Anna who misses the party because she has to fill in a customs form for importing all the necessary quinoa, or the Anna who goes to the office 9-5pm and then to the world’s seventh best party 9pm-6am? Maybe that counts as selling my soul, but at least I’ll have a blast doing so