The Prequel: Yikes

What Can You Do With An English Degree?

Or 'Why I can't be trusted making seatbelts'

I went to this seminar for one reason only. I wanted to know the answer. I sat in suspense for two hours; I wonder what it could be? Something brilliant, no doubt. Maybe something exciting in the CIA or MI5 (hell even MI6). Those guy's are always pretty good with words. Spies are so British-y and eloquent. Like Me.

Unfortunately the seminar leader was sketchy on the specifics. Stick thin, with a head of gingery hair resembling carroty candyfloss, she looked as if she had been constructed by Konnie Huq et al on a Blue Peter show. There was something artificial about her blank expression, her generic plain clothes and her paper mache shoes. She showed us spider diagrams, websites, holiday photos - even her Facebook page popped up by accident.

"Some people," she said excitedly. "Go on to do Teaching. TEE-CHING."

She scribbled it on a whiteboard and underlined it thrice.

"Others go on to do wonderful things. Like Hair and Make-up"

In that case, they could have saved a few quid and cut out the English Degree, I thought. When I get my hair cut, the girl who washes my hair doesn't even know which tap is hot and which is cold. I very much doubt she knows anything about Phonetics or Syntax.

"And we had one boy once, a few years ago, who went to do Medicine. So there's lots of options."

Medicine? The basic point of this seminar was that we are allowed to spend more money on new courses that will make us qualified in stuff. What about MI5? CIA? CTU? I know all the CTU protocal, I've been watching it since Season 2. I even have the ringtone on my phone, and sometimes answer my phone by saying 'Almeida', even though my name is Mandle.

Alas, she never specifically told me what I can do with an English Degree.

The problem is, I sort of need to know.

Now.

Like, in the next few hours please.

True, I am occupied with exams (who isn't? Maybe those bloody first year students. Sitting in the sun, casually getting drunk, making friends...i hate them so much) and finish University forever in four weeks, but I could do with some direction soon. I bought a compass in a vain attempt for some direction; unfortunately, while it does point me in a direction, it's more of a geographical direction, i.e South West. I need a philosophical direction, in the form of a job offer, nobel prize or exciting reality Tv show.

Graduating sort of feels like being violently shoved in a cannon. There's a little bit of anxiety, a slice of pressure, a pinch of violence sickness. Meanwhile, the admin at the English Building gleefully light the fuse with a cigarette and claw through a bag of malteasers while I sweat it out in a very claustrophobic blasting device. "There goes one more," they chime, aiming the cannon's trajectory towards a giant warehouse full of graduates who resort to crafting seatbelts for the rest of their lives.

Luckily, it seems I'm going to be underqualified to work in a seatbelt factory (Fate has sent me a third class degree, by the looks of things) - I can easily feign ignorance at how to clip the seatbelt together and badly construct the intricate spring mechanism that allows people out of said seatbelts. I mean, if you can put a seatbelt on, but then never get out because some div didn't make it properly, then the guy who made the seatbelt won't last for long at the seatbelt factory.

Someone could properly die from such bad craftsmanship, so I'll leave those jobs for the 2:1 lads and ladettes.