Feeling Lost and Finding My Footing

I am at that moment in life where the fun of university is behind me and I have moved back home temporarily as I try to figure out where I want to go and what I want to do. Recently I have been feeling like a failure, applying to countless jobs without ever hearing back, which has caused a lost sense of motivation to put myself out there in fear of another rejection. The thing that I have found most baffling is that no one prepares you for this stage, which you don’t realise till you’re slowly trudging through it. No one warns you how hard it is going to be to find a job when you are competing against those who were already in the industry while you were still at school deciding what GCSEs to take. The whole trajectory of school builds towards being accepted into a university, you aren’t taught what to do after you graduate and you are released from the safety net of education. There are no more clear steps to follow.

My mum has always said “Once you have found your first job no matter what it is, it will be easier to find the next one”; however, unfortunately for me what she has never been able to tell me is how to secure the first job which can seem impossible. When asking my mum how she secured her first she told me she was lucky enough to find one whilst in her third year of university. Hearing this has unintentionally caused me to put a mountain of pressure on myself, as I began to compare my months of no success against my mum’s accomplishments. “You’re useless, you’re a failure”, I would tell myself each morning as I opened my laptop to see an empty inbox staring back at me.

It can be terrifying to not have a game plan or any idea when you will finally receive that acceptance phone call, whether it will be tomorrow or a year from now. Those who have already achieved success in your life tell you “Not to worry” or that “You have all the time in the world” but those of us who are scrambling to get hired begin to feel the pressures of time, worrying that companies will judge us for the time we have spent failing to be employed, which can in itself cause further barriers.

It has taken months of internally beating myself up for not being employed to realise that maybe it’s not all my fault. Maybe it’s the fact that the pandemic has heavily cut down on the number of available jobs, as well as the issue of competing against those who were unfortunate enough to not be hired last year plus those who were furloughed due to this worldwide health crisis. Although somehow, I am still expected to beat these unfeasible odds and be successful.

However, what I am beginning to realise is that there is not necessarily one path you can take or one right choice, sometimes you may discover during this process that what you thought was your dream job may become undesirable. One of my favourite bloggers, Chloe Plumstead recently wrote an article about the fact that “Nobody knows what they’re doing and that’s quite nice.” This statement in a way has brought me a sense of a comfort as I try to find my footing in the world of work. Unfortunately, I haven’t had any success yet but I am lucky enough that I have a supportive family who can look after me in the meantime. Even though I am feeling slightly lost in this transitional stage I am choosing to put my faith in the phrase “It always works out in the end” so going forward I am being optimistic that I will eventually find my first job and know my worth as a candidate when I do.