Post-Collegiate Drift; Making the Transition from an English Degree

In retrospect, I was always going to do an MA. During my degree I had not undertaken summer work-experience placements at London marketing companies; I had not written features for the university newspaper; I had not written to every magazine in the country for that elusive internship. I had not, in truth, considered that my degree was actually going to end - so it seemed only appropriate that it should not. Several other factors drew me towards academia:

- I seemed to be pretty good at it.

- The interest rate on a postgraduate bank loan wasn't so high - and as I was over £10,000 in debt anyway - what was ten more?

I could put up with people saying, 'Just can't stay away, can you?' when I told them I was going back to university if it meant that for 30 weeks of the year I wouldn't have to see them at all. (Now that I'm doing a PhD they just curl their upper lip like Elvis and walk away).

It was a great course - the teaching was expert and led to the publication of my reviews and poetry. As well as gathering vital contacts and improving ten-fold as a scholar, I had deferred the post-collegiate slump for a whole year. Friends who had graduated before me had spiraled into jobless depression. One was training as an accountant - which didn't seem much better.

We celebrated the night we handed in our MA theses. It was the end of September 2004 and just about the dumbest thing I've ever celebrated. The next week I passed my driving test and moved to Bristol. After six months of sporadic bar work (applying for more or less every job that wasn't bar work) I'd achieved zero interviews and one offer of work in a processed food factory wherein, I was warned, 'You might not fit in because of your posh accent. I tried dropping the odd "t", but it was no use. Even the city's celebrated telesales gulags wouldn't take me: I didn't have any office experience.

Oh, and when a newspaper advert reads "Graduates Required" it is nearly always a cruel joke and the job is aggressive door-to-door sales; charity debit-card hustling - which is all very well if you don't need to meet your own gaze in the mirror each morning.

By the following February my new suit was still in its cellophane wrapper, I was drinking too much and paying my rent with my credit card. My daily CV pushing had become a pretext for slipping into every pub I passed.

During one of these afternoon sprees, I discussed the quandary with a kindly old barman. 'It's all very well widening participation, he said, but the fact is, there never have been that many good jobs - and there never will be.'

'It's worse,' I leered. 'When Waterstones advertise for a sales assistant, they know they're going to be able to choose between a hundred English Lit graduates'. 'Maybe it's time a degree was seen purely as an education', he said.

'Hmmph,' I said. 'Come now,' he said. 'If you really wanted a job you'd have studied law or engineering.' At this point I suffered something of an epiphany. Embittered, penniless and dejected, I moved back in with my parents.

It may be that Somerset doesn't have two universities producing a constant river of graduates; it may be that people leave at the age of twenty and don't come back until they retire; it may just have been good luck, but I found work in my hometown a week after I moved back. The popular opinion - gleefully propagated by journalists who didn't have to pay tuition fees and received generous government grants for their degrees - that a BA isn't worth the paper certificate it's printed on can work to one's advantage.

On starting a temp job, you will find that your employer, far from expecting you to be adept in any specialist field, will be surprised (delighted, even) that you are capable of writing a letter, using a simple spreadsheet, sending a fax, putting on your own tie and making a cup of coffee without scalding yourself. Should you be proficient at any one of the above, you will find yourself branded an asset to the team. Your references will glow, your CV will burgeon with new skills and you will never have trouble getting office work again. To quote a colleague of mine: 'A job isn't about being good at anything; it's about turning up every day at nine o' clock and not getting sick very often.'

The temp-placements I took were about as taxing as a tabloid crosswords -but this left my mind free to think about writing. During eighteen months of temping as a financial assistant things started to come together. I found a publisher for my first collection of poetry; I got an Eric Gregory award for British poets under 30; I wrote off my car, but didn't die; and, on the strength of all the above, I'm about to start a PhD on prose-poetry. Just call me Lucky Jim.

In self-reflection we have a tendency towards solipsism. If things go badly for us, the system is fucked-up. If things go well, we're living proof that if you believe in yourself, you can accomplish anything. Of course, both arguments are bobbins. Last week a graduate friend of mine, working - for the last three years an office job she could have got if she'd left school at 16, said to me:

'My car was in the garage so mum picked me up after work. I'd had a crap day, the phones were ringing constantly, just non-stop, and I was feeling miserable. I said, 'Mum, is this all there is? Is this really all life is?' And she said, 'Yes. Ha ha ha!' And then she said, 'Sorry!' in a sort of sarcastic tone of voice, and then she laughed again.

Visit Luke at www.myspace.com/lukekennard