Na-na, why don't you get a job?

So this is it. The three years of University education, being a tax-dodging student, spunking money on nothing but beer and booze (...oh), are over, and it's time to move into the world, grow up, get a job and join the ranks of people counting down the days til retirement.

I'm not that cynical about this, actually; in fact I'm quite looking forward to procuring a nice job where I can settle into the initial groove of my career path and look upwards at the various rungs I wish to climb, as they - hopefully - come nearer. The trouble is, we came to Uni to get a degree...to get a good job. And since I finished my University work and stepped up the employment push, I've discovered something. Getting the degree, it seems, was the easy part.

For everybody has a degree nowadays. That's the first blow: of course, how did I not see at the beginning? Everybody who'll be applying to the jobs I want will need, and therefore have, a degree too! It must come down to grade, perhaps. But apparently, a lot of places don't place much emphasis on the difference between an upper second (2:1) or lower second (2:2). Why, then, did I bother working hard enough to aim to achieve a 2:1? (Or, why didn't I work harder to achieve a first?! Damnit Damnit Damnit.)

A desire to work in the type of industries where the cliche 'it's not what you know but who you know' is a general rule of thumb, which happens to be shared by thousands of people in exactly the same boat as me, is obviously an uphill struggle. In my view it's worth attempting and worth trying to succeed. However in just a few weeks I have learnt that your supposed aides, the recruitment agencies, are not your friend beyond the first contact. They'll happily cart you off into any role, vaguely linked to some element of your chosen profession often simply by being opposite a building where the job you actually want goes on. The way in, it appears all to clearly, is indeed to know someone, or hit that jackpot with a chance meeting, an opportunist, impulsive journey, or simply being in the right place at the right time. In other words, a degree might give you the knowledge, but that's it: it's up to you to find out how to use it.

I'm not convinced that this is what Playstation 3 meant when they said; 'This.Is.Living.'