That Girl from Derwent dwells on the value of religion this Christmas.
That Girl from Derwent has learned a few more things about prejudice since moving up North.
That Girl From Derwent reckons if you're going to be offensive, you should find a better reason.
That Girl from Derwent considers why it is that some words have wider implications than others.
Graduation is typically a time of immense possibility, where the opportunities that we've been given are celebrated and future ones anticipated. As I understand it, a certain feeling of trepidation is normal, but I think I'm right in assuming that the class of 2010, by graduating into the most difficult jobs market since Thatcher, had a special right to be terrified. Having decided to pursue a line of work that has absolutely nothing to do with my degree, I felt especially hard done by.
At first, it seemed like a stupid thing to do. At first, everyone thought I was joking when I said I was going to be a medical doctor, despite having graduated from York with a BA in English, but as the idea that I could actually do it gradually dawned on me, I began to dedicate myself to making it happen. It was an ambitious plan. Someone told me the other day that the odds of getting a place on a fast track graduate medicine course are the same as getting into the SAS.
Graduating into a recession made us all feel as if we couldn't afford to be idealistic, that we should just take whatever we could get. In a sense, we were right to, as the soul-crushing emptiness of unemployment is remedied even by the most miserable and dead-ended of jobs. Even with my eyes on a big prize I struggled with the sense of uselessness that came with having very little to fill my days but endless episodes of House. I nearly went mad, but in the end I forced myself to take on some voluntary work at my local hospital at least once a week, with the aim of both adding to my university application and of giving me a reason to get out of bed in the morning - the only other reason being my biweekly trips to the job centre. I was also fortunate enough to spend a week wandering in and out of operating theatres as a work experience student watching all manner of gruesome and incredible surgeries. I am officially not afraid of the sight of blood.
After 20 job applications a day for three months, for every kind of job under the sun, I was invited to a single interview. I got lucky and ended up being offered an administrative job in a London hospital, the ideal ground for fostering my desire to become a medical student, and where I continue to be constantly informed about, and inspired towards, my future career by the people around me. The NHS is really and truly amazing.
It's both exhilarating and terrifying to realise that you have the freedom to choose to do whatever you want with the rest of your life, even if that means taking a step back in order to go down a brand new path. After all, why should we feel bound, for the rest of our lives, by decisions we made when we chose our A-level subjects at 15, or our degree subjects at 17? And why should we feel that the only way that attending university enhanced our lives was by means of the qualification we graduated with? Speaking for myself and many of the people that surrounded me in my three years at York, some of the most important experiences that informed our subsequent life choices were certainly not had in the library.
I don't think I would be on my way to Nottingham University in September to start learning to be a doctor without having done many of the things I did in York. Without People and Planet society I would have lacked the sense of social responsibility that made me want to do medicine in the first place. Without Labour club I would have missed out on a great example of teamwork that served me well at interview. Without running in the YUSU elections, I would never have had the confidence to aim for something that I thought myself unlikely to reach.
I hit the jackpot and I'm sure there were many of us who weren't so lucky. But I like to think that if I was one of those people, I wouldn't have given up on what I really wanted to do, or just accepted that times were hard and therefore my chosen career was going to be out of reach. After all if graduation, and the sense of possibility that it inevitably brings, is not time to start pursuing what we really want to do with our lives, then when is?
Lies and slander!
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