Carving your career path isn’t easy, and it doesn’t end until the day you retire. It can be hard to have a ‘glass half full’ kind of attitude if you’re one of those just starting out. Many graduates are more ‘entire glass poured into a sewer of death, despair and shattered dreams’ than even ‘glass half empty’.
However, all is not lost. A million things can be learned from diving into the world of work as soon as it’s legal for you to do so. Combine your studies with some part-time hours and you can learn how to deal with the public, how to handle cash and how to hide from your boss while eating a sausage roll in the stockroom (shout-out to Jack). Plus, you’ll get paid, which makes you feel invincible when you haven’t even sat your exams yet.
Lesson 1: Hard graft pays
My first job was as a waitress/glorified pot-washer in a cosy independent café in Hull. It was 2005, I was in my last year at school, and at just under the minimum wage, I was earning £3 an hour (cash in hand). At the time, this was all brilliant. I worked five hours a week every Saturday, and when I received that little brown envelope stashed with three measly fivers at the end of the day, I couldn’t have been happier. I could buy denim handbags and glittery lipgloss with my own hard-earned cash, hooray! At sixteen years of age, like many teens before me, I was learning the value of hard graft, and believe it or not, I felt quite rich.
Also, we’d usually get free cake and scones on quiet days, so there’s that.
Lesson 2: Your colleagues are your allies
I moved into retail after that. I probably shouldn’t say where, but let’s just say it’s a huge chain with seriously questionable ethics. Starts with the letter P. Ok it was Primark, I worked for Primark. I won’t lie – it was hell on earth. One of my main duties was folding. I even had a folding table. I still see those things in the stores today and get weirdly nostalgic. But that’s just the thing – although the job itself was pretty awful, the people weren’t.
The camaraderie that existed in the Hull Primark store circa 2005-6 was what made the job livable. You could put the world to rights together over the course of a good folding session. If you grabbed a spot next to the door where you could throw some people-watching into mix, you had yourself a party my friend. Even the tills weren’t so bad if you had a great bagging assistant by your side .
The terrible wages, unreasonable demands and often rather terrifying customers didn’t matter, because you had a laugh, and you knew that there’d be life after it. I learnt that the personality of your colleagues really can make or break a job.
Lesson 3: You can balance life and work
After that I worked my way through several retail positions, before transitioning into bar work. My skills in pint pulling, sticky surface cleaning and serving multiple orders at great speed came into existence. The first bar I worked in was a student pub, so I also learnt how to hold my tongue when faced with young – ahem – adults who would order £1 shots of Apple Sourz while wearing pyjamas and polluting the already Lynx-infused air with words like “chunder”.
Here’s the thing though, I was a student too. I was just working alongside my degree instead of spending my time complaining about the fact my weekly allowance from mum hadn’t come in, or that it was another few months until my student loan would be released. I had amazing workmates, still managed to score a 2:1 and also maintained a decent social life.
What did I learn? How to balance life with work. I also gained a lot of patience and learnt that the general public (or clients to some) can be… difficult.
Lesson 4: Confidence can be faked
After uni I had a brief teaching stint in South Korea. Now, dealing with children is a different kettle of fish altogether. Again, you need lots of patience, but I also began to accept something that I’ve tried to carry with me ever since – the fact that confidence matters. If you walk into a classroom full of expectant seven year olds and deliver a lesson without any conviction, you might as well go home and face-plant that pillow that your parent probably bought for you. The same absolutely applies to working in management, and if you believe in something enough, others will too.
Ok, that last part mostly applies to children. They will literally believe anything. Confidence can be faked though, so if you don’t have it, fake it until you do. Here’s a secret – for most people, that’s all confidence actually is.
Lesson 5: Never stop trying
I’d always wanted to turn writing into a career, and I finally wormed my way into my chosen industry almost three years ago. It was only last year that I landed my dream role. The frustrating thing about securing a job you love is that you may not realise you love doing it until you’re actually doing it. Life’s a bitch. What’s vital to keep in mind though is that all the soul-destroying, demeaning jobs are totally worth it, especially if you start early. Aside from all the practical skills, you’ll learn a lot about yourself (there’s a reason clichés like that exist).
Take the rough with the smooth, don’t expect other people to do anything for you, and don’t assume that your dream job will be offered to you like magic. Keep carving your path, climbing the ladder, whatever you want to call it – but just don’t stop trying.
Where’s your sense of adventure?
A Cup of Starshine 