The Importance of Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone
As a job-seeking graduate, It’s easy to fall into a rut of part-time bar or hospitality work and the trappings that come along with it, such as mammoth lie-ins and day-time TV marathons, under the assumption that it’s just a stop-gap between University and the adult world.
Despite typically paying minimum wage, most hospitality jobs offer enough to get by and live comfortably on day-to-day, meaning there is never the desperation to move on to something more careerist or full-time, and the social side of it leads to you constantly re-assuring yourself at its lowest or most infuriating times: at least it’s not an office job.
The hours, however, are where the real problem comes. The late nights and early mornings mean you are too occupied to search for something better and you’re too exhausted on the days off to even consider the extensive and stomach-turning self-selling process of job applications.
It’s a job that demands dysfunction, sacrificing your social hours to pour pints and wait tables for people to whom you’re just another faceless name. More importantly, these are hours that could be used to pursue your passions and put into place those crucial first steps that lead you towards where you want to be in life.
The issue with this sort of work is that it’s created a generation of boiled frog graduates:
“A frog placed in boiling water will immediately jump out to save itself, but a frog placed in water that is then heated to boiling will adjust its body temperature accordingly and, thus, not realize that it is being boiled to death.” - Danny Wallace
Obviously, spending years treading water in hospitality isn’t going to lead to your death (at least, I’d like to hope not) but what I mean by this is that rather than pursuing their professional passions, there is a whole generation of graduates stagnating and going through the motions of daily life.
Before you know it, 6 months, a year, 2 years, have passed and all you have to show for it are the ability to pour the perfect pint or make a banging cappuccino. In which time, the Environmental Sciences or Urban and Regional Planning degree you spent three years studying diligently towards has started to accumulate a miniature-mountain of dust and cobwebs.
All of which brings me to my point: get out of your comfort zone!
Why waste any more time in a job that will have you bigging up the transferrable skills of customer interaction and cash-handling on your CV and in job interviews for the foreseeable future rather than actually getting out there and working on projects you can be proud of?
Whilst it may appear daunting at first, getting experience in fields and industries other than hospitality, even if they’re completely unrelated to your degree, can give you a really fulfilling and illuminating insight into the world of work and lets you explore different options until you find the perfect fit for you.
You might have to work for free in work placements and internships for the initial stages, but you’ll be much better off in the long-run if it leads to a full-time job, especially one that is personally-fulfilling, as the tip-centric nature of hospitality jobs lends itself to hand-to-mouth living anyway.
If you really want to work in one particular field or industry, then try and get experience in that area and ask the people you meet how they got to where they are today, as this will give you an invaluable blueprint to success.
And if you haven’t a clue what you want to do, try and get experience in a few different areas, as this will give you a taste of what different job roles entail to help determine what you do or don’t want out of your first proper job.
Change can be scary but don’t be a boiled frog; put yourself out there. Your dream job isn’t just going to fall into your lap so go out and make it happen!
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