“So when are you going to get a real job?”

If your eye started twitching as soon you read that, you just might know where I’m going with this.

For me, it started roughly a month after I returned home to Kidderminster from my undergraduate degree. I was too giddy at the thought of once again living in a house with functioning central heating and no mould to mind that my parents also lived there. My spirits were high, my bank balance was low, and my optimism about my future career in journalism was somewhere in the middle, depending on what day you caught me on. Back in school I had always assumed that you walked out of the door to university with your scroll in hand, crossed the road and walked straight in to the office of your dream job.

I didn’t realise until the day I graduated that those scrolls are fake, just plastic props that are only used for the official photos. I was a little disappointed that you don’t actually get a piece of rolled up parchment to show the world your new found knowlege. Is that a metaphor? I hope not.

Anyway, here I am a month after graduating with a first in Magazine Journalism, working a pretty chilled out job in a coffee shop to try and bring my bank balance back from the brink while also trying to get my drivers license. This was going to be my ‘struggle’ phase. Once I had my car, I felt sure I was ready to venture out in to the world and start my life as a journalist. I started trawling through job websites for something that suited me, and I may as well have just tied my CV to a brick and hurled it in to the River Severn for all the good it did.

I found that even entry level jobs seemed to require at least a year’s worth of work experience, an extensive portfolio, or to be fluent in seven different disciplines that each require their own degree. I decided I needed something more. There were skills I’d learned at undergraduate that needed refining, if I wanted a leg up on the competition.

I didn’t have an answer to that dreaded question the first time it cropped up while talking to an old family friend in the street.

“So when are you going to get a real job?”

I gritted my teeth and said something about keeping an eye out, about passing my driving test first, joked about how the job I have now is most definitely real. I’d been keeping a close eye on any news involving the Student Loans Company, particularly a story that had been developing over a few months. There was a sense of triumph when the news broke about the postgraduate loans scheme.

The triumph came because I knew when I was faced with that question again, two years later, I’d have an answer.

“Oh, I’m probably going to go get my Masters first.”