It’s not easy being a 'penultimate year undergraduate.' You’re confronted by a never ending stream of fresh-faced first years, reminding of you of what you once were – even though it really doesn’t feel like a year ago that you were cycling to Sidgwick for the first time. All of a sudden, everyone’s expectations of you have skyrocketed. According to your supervisors, being a second year means that you’re supposed to increase the number of hours in a day from 24 to 28. And to top it all off, you’re confronted with the crippling anxiety that the real world, which had once seemed so distant and mythical, is less than two years away.

To me, this last part seems the worst, and our university in particular does nothing to help. I’ve barely been back three weeks, and all of a sudden my inbox is being flooded by emails from the careers service: internships, grad schemes and placements. We are very quickly confronted with our lack of knowledge of the world outside the Cambridge bubble. Questions are being raised that I’d never once considered. What is management consultancy? Could I do it? Why do I get the feeling that a 'careers fair' is a lot less fun than it actually sounds?

There is a wider pressure for students as young as nineteen years old to be doing something. And 'something' appears to be code for 'applying for internships to get on a fast track to a corporation in the city.' All over the university, it is subconsciously narrated to us that these institutions are the way to success. Since returning, I’ve had countless leaflets in my pigeonhole from a multitude of different banks and consultancy firms. Even on Facebook, the go-to place to escape responsibility and pressure, there are events plastered over my newsfeed; sixteen of my friends are attending the “HSBC networking event”.

Of course, this pressure can’t be blamed solely on the university. Why would they be trying to market these firms and careers to us if there wasn’t already a demand for them? The reality runs much deeper than that. Young people all over the country are being pressured to decide what they want to do, how they’re going to get there, and how exactly they can market themselves as a “team player” on their CV. At nineteen and twenty years old, people who have only just figured out how to do their own laundry are supposed to know what they want to do for the rest of their lives.

Maybe, when the top jobs are so competitive, starting early is inevitable. But it still appears that everything is geared towards employability and how much money you can make. An argument used by many to support rising university tuition fees is that such fees will stop people studying 'useless degrees', and yet, the criteria often used to describe something as 'useless' tends to be the fact that it won’t land them a job. What about learning for the sake of learning? The same goes for extra-curricular activities. Students seem to engage with them when they are tempted by the promise to enhance their CVs and make themselves more employable. But again, why are we doing these things to get a job, rather than to develop ourselves? 

There’s nothing wrong with getting a job in the city, and if you’re one of those people, the amazing opportunities that internships and placements offered can be exciting and motivate you to succeed. But we ought to debunk the myth that if you aren’t doing this, you’ve failed. There are so many worthwhile things you can do, and just because you aren’t necessarily in the most competitive, well-paid job, that doesn’t mean you aren’t successful. In my eyes, travelling the world and gaining experience of other cultures, for example, is just as much a mark of success as a graduate placement at Ernst and Young. We need to redress the notion that being on your way to a six figure salary and being successful are mutually exclusive, and realise that life is so much more than the job you do.

@millayayay