Being a first year student feels just the same as being a first year professional
The feeling of a first year student strolling around with a yellow tote bag doesn’t differ from that of a graduate, argues our columnist Kirsty McHenry. “The self-consciousness that comes with presenting myself to potential employers feels uncannily like the awkwardness of those first few weeks of university.”
As autumn rolls around again, the UvA campuses have once more filled with crowds of fresh faces. Clutching bright yellow Intreeweek tote bags or perching tentatively on the edges of freshly formed friend groups, these newbies are easy to spot. Now three years on from the start of my own degree, I didn’t expect to have quite so much in common with them. Yet as I stumble into professional life I’m finding myself in much the same position: unsure where I’m headed or how I’m supposed to get there.
Starting a degree and beginning the hunt for full-time employment share a few striking similarities. If the UvA campuses are perplexing at first, with their many twists and turns, so too is the professional realm just beyond the university perimeter. In those early weeks, it’s easy to feel lost. During this time, an eventual qualification can seem an impossibly distant prospect, offering about as much comfort as a pension to a graduate with rent to pay.
Where I was once a nameless face in a crowded lecture hall, I am now a faceless name on a CV – a CV which, at this very moment, is likely somewhere being sorted into the ‘rejected’ bin by an unfeeling AI recruitment software. The self-consciousness that comes with presenting myself to potential employers feels uncannily like the awkwardness of those first few weeks of university. Both have meant clumsy attempts to put forth the best version of myself while hiding my flaws behind a strained smile and a layer of enthusiasm that borders on excessive. I just hope my LinkedIn network doesn’t pick up on how desperate I am for them to like me.
I may not have a garish yellow tote hanging by my side to mark me as a newbie, but I’m pretty sure that my inexperience sticks out to employers just the same. No matter how hard I try, there seems to be a thousand tiny slip ups that give me away and many more mistakes to be made before I can even pretend to know what I’m doing. Even after two decades of practice, it’s still unclear to me how much eye contact is too much eye contact, or the exact right handshake-firmness to garner an interviewer’s respect. Unfortunately, they never teach you these kinds of practical, real-world skills at university.
I won’t pretend that the uncertainties I had in those early weeks ever entirely went away; they invariably return to taunt me every time I stand at the edge of something new. However, when I think back on my own university experience, I realise that the self-assurance I’d built by graduation came from lessons I hardly noticed I was learning. Inevitably, most of us grow attuned to the rhythm of student life as the challenges that were once daunting become part of the regular routine. I’m hoping that professional life will prove the same, although I’m sure I’ll make a few wrong turns and hit a couple more dead ends before that happens.
