There’s been little said from me and I think I know why. I left secondary school in 2010, off the back of the financial crisis (2008-2009) in the UK. I learned about its severity alongside my peers in the run-up to our university applications. After the crisis, teachers anticipated a spike in competitiveness for higher education places. I remember one teacher using the phrase “50,000 more applicants”. After all, who would want to enter the work force at a time like this?
Yet, they simply didn’t prepare us for other avenues. But I don’t blame the teachers. To ensure that this school was the one to drive out the competition and secure places for a majority of its students (gaining excellent admissions stats in the process) was no doubt the plan for most schools. Not many teachers care about this kind of institutional branding. But they certainly care about keeping their own jobs. And so the message, passed down from the principal, became clear: compete, compete, compete.
I had been stubbornly opposed to the challenge of setting myself apart on a university admissions form. The school trip to Malawi was essential for this end; a post-colonial performance of charity that functioned to display the school-leaver’s exceptionalism. I was inarticulately against it, my mum fraught at my laziness. At the eleventh hour of my graduate year I signed up to a college to train as a journalist. Taught by those recently laid off from some of the biggest print papers, it was a strange blow to the enthusiasm of youth.
After two years of being warned about an industry in decline, I held a diploma and little confidence for my 2012 career debut. I felt I needed more grit and experience, and decided to take advantage of free university education in Scotland. That same year I began a Humanities degree. I supported myself by living at home, a peppering of precarious jobs, and when the jobs eventually conflicted with my classes, a loan from my parents.
Unlike the college, nobody spoke about mass unemployment on the university campus. For a while I could live the academic fantasy of climbing its pyramid of stability. The meandering gothic buildings and bustling corridors gave the impression of opportunity, of access to some kind of secure future. But I wasn’t an exceptional student. I got lost in the industrial scale. As masses were pouring into 9am lectures (some held 200) I suffered more than a bit of shock at the competition at hand, occurring in similar halls all across the country.
And so for the last decade? I graduated, I was unemployed. I worked server jobs. I was unemployed. I studied again, this time getting a masters with distinction. I was unemployed. I worked server jobs. I was unemployed again. All of these events have to do with the increase in higher education without creation of industry roles, the gig economy, the new model of social class in the UK, and the steady erosion of workers’ rights - all now underscored by Brexit. But it’s taken me a long time to consider that the system might be broken, that I’m not the only one.
I’ve felt a lot of shame and hopelessness these last 10 years. Maybe, finally, I could see the social problem beyond the trees. When the pandemic - and the latest bout of unemployment - hit in March 2020, the slowness of the lockdown enabled me to interrogate the strata of these circumstances. Here are some of the sources that helped me begin the process and feel less alone:
This substack by Anne Helen Peterson, author of The Burnout Generation
This book by Briohny Doyle
In turn, I’ve stopped silencing myself with the shame that I’m the only one failing at late capitalism, and instead I notice how it’s failing all of us. I feel myself now at the Golden Hour. In medical terms, this is the period of time after a traumatic injury during which there is the highest likelihood that prompt medical and surgical treatment will prevent death. I’m scrambling for answers, for something I can do differently as I approach my second decade in the workforce. I’m not sure I can provide any, or whether I’m just peering into the void. But nonetheless, I’m glad you’re here.