Jania's Story

Jania is very thin, and very beautiful. She looks more Russian than Polish and reminds me of Kitty in Dostoevsky's Anna Karenina. Her eyes are full of life, her cheekbones are high and she polishes cutlery in the back of an Italian restaurant. She is 23 years old, like me, and yet she sees her life as one filled with opportunity. Jania's optimism is striking. She loves nature, exercise and parks and she loves Hyde Park. The way she pronounces Hyde Park is delicate: Hyde becomes Hy-ed, just like the Israeli's make their country into a three syllable word.

"It's very hot in here." We're both polishing cutlery furiously. There is a constant knife shortage in the restaurant and each shift I've worked another packet of knives is circulated, and yet there is always a customer demanding the second half of his cutlery set. Jania's face gleams with sweat as we both feed cutlery into the polisher. The whole staff are in general agreement that the machine does nothing. Each knife comes out grainier than when it went in before, so our work is doubled. Company policy tells us that we must feed cutlery through the machine, and yet we must also scrub it by hand too.

"This job is so tiring" says Jania, with a smile. Every complaint she makes, she smiles, as if to soften the blow.  I ask her if she works full time.

"At the moment I work full time yes. I came here a year ago to work and I'm still here. I want to study here as well though, but it will be very expensive because I already have a first degree."

Guiltily, this revelation shocked me. In three weeks, it was the first time she had mentioned having a degree.

"Yes, it's in social work. I really want to be a social worker."

I ask her why she's here if she wants to be a social worker.

"In Poland, life is hard. A professional wage can be as low as £300 a month. With the Euro, the prices of everything are really high, and it is a struggle. The only thing that is different, are the, how do you say, apartments, rooms? The cost of those in Poland are a lot lower than here."

I explain that London can feel like a separate country to the rest of England, and if she wanted cheaper rent the whole of the UK didn't cost the same as London.

"Ok, that's good to know, but I want to be here, in London. I have a boyfriend here now. And then I can save to study. I just want to read all the time to help me get on the degree course. I think I want to study psychology on top of my first degree so I can really specialise in social work. I'm reading Freud at the moment, in English. It is a challenge, but it is so interesting."

At the risk of sounding like someone from Ukip, I asked her why she wants to pursue Social Work in England rather than Poland.

"The money, and of course, I know that England is short of social workers because is it perceived to be a difficult job. It is a challenge to come to the UK and do this."

I found it difficult to work out why, other than money, she had to come to the UK to do social work. There are plenty of people in Poland who need caring for. I wondered whether Polish immigration was motivated by something other than money.

"My mother left my sister and I when I was 17 to go to Italy to find work. My father works in plant near our town. A lot of people leave. How do I feel about it? I like the EU, as it means that I can earn more money waitressing here than I could at home. I know, the cost of living is higher, but, it's nice."

Do you send money home?

"No because my sister is an English teacher so she earns enough. And my mother is still in Italy working. It is very bad for families at the moment. We are all split up and we don't see each other. I worry that the future of Poland will not have the family at the heart, because I know in my generation, so many people are leaving to find work abroad that we don't feel we have families any more. We are all separate."

And yet people  keep leaving?

"It is seen as successful to leave and earn money abroad. There is nothing for me in Poland. My mother is not there, there is no motivation to be there."

But is this exodus sustainable? I asked her whether she would go back?

"I think it is the dream of most Polish people to work somewhere like England for 10 years in whatever job they can do, and then go back to Poland to start a family when they're like, 30 years. That is when they start doing the job that they dreamed of in High School."

I asked what the dream of most polish girls was when they left school.

"Some want to be famous, just like the whole world. But many want to be teachers, and nanny's. We have to be realistic in Poland."

So what was her plan now? Jania had been working at the restaurant for a year now and she still hadn't been promoted from back of house cutlery polisher to waitress because of her language skills. Jania who reads Freud and hopes to become a psychologist after being a social worker.

"Now, I save for my degree. I want to do here, in England. And then I will get experience for free by volunteering with social workers. And then hopefully I can get a job. My polish degree is not worth anything here because I need to translate all the papers and it's not the same as the UK. It's tiring. Sometimes I want to make myself feel happy, you know?"

And her always optimistic face momentarily creased into a frown.

Monday morning and the quest for blue and white enamel

This morning felt a little Joycian. I had decided to task myself with recording exactly how a JobHungryGrad feels on a Monday morning, when the rest of the world has disappeared off to their offices and places of learning, and is left at the kitchen table drinking tea in front of their red laptop.

Next to me is a small pile of crusts (I have not yet reached the depths of unemployed graduate poverty that I will willingly eat the crusts of a week old gluten-free loaf). My left hand's ring finger is sticky with marmalade, so I am taking care not to allow it to touch the keyboard. My tea is simmering in a white and blue enamel mug. And what a mug. It is a fabulous, light, unbreakable mug which started my quest to replenish my crockery stash with a row of blue and white enamel mugs hanging off hooks in our new kitchen. (http://www.surplusandoutdoors.com/shop/camping-equipment/plates-enamel-wear.html)

My excitement was fueled by the discovery that it's also possible to buy a classic blue and white enamel pie dish and a classic enamel Billy Can. The Billy Can I can understand, but who goes camping and bakes a pie? How do you bake a pie in a tent? All the more questions for the JobHungryGrad to query during the long week ahead.

Otherwise, I feel happy. I had an incredible weekend, and and have an invite to interview tomorrow. It's unlikely I'll get it and the hours are long and yes, it's based in an office, but it fits my schedule and I crave human interaction.

I went to an incredible coffee shop in Shoreditch yesterday (www.weekendnotes.co.uk/fix-126-cafe-shoreditch-it's got the best coffee in the whole of London) and sat down with my boyfriend to make a comprehensive list of everything I want to achieve this week. I stayed up until midnight last night writing article updates and then this morning have decided to finish writing my chapter on Budapest in my book. I job hunted before my toast and marmalade, found nothing because it was 7am and will resume the search later this afternoon.

If there's one job hunting lesson I learnt last week it was that just searching for jobs can drain the energy and the life out of your short time on earth. The reason I left the civil service was because I wanted more time to write and because I didn't like the painfully hierarchical and unpleasant structure. Why waste my new found free time trying to conform it to the constraints of a working day? I work best early in the morning and late at night so why try to impose a 9-5 structure when it didn't really work before? Surely the middle of the days should be for doing things, seeing things I wouldn't usually get to see, walking around in circles and catching up on writing?

I quit my graduate job because I needed some space to work out my path but also to work on my path. I can't forget that like I did last week.

The Wheel of Fortune (Kay Starr FYI)

Graduates are unlikely to have experience. Unless you make friends with people who mirror you identically, why not share experiences and skills to help your unemployed friends develop skills, bulk up their CV and become a more well-rounded person.

If you know a grad (or anybody I suppose) looking for a job, and you feel that you have a skill you could share, find out what you could exchange. I know how to use Social Media. So I could approach my friend who is hapless at using Twitter and offer an exchange to develop my dressmaking skills.

Why not set up a skill sharing site? 

Right now, I want to learn/perfect/better myself at the following:

• Night time photography with SLR camera (see above photo for evidence of my lack of ability)
• HTML
• Graphic Design
• Advanced Yoga
• How to make sushi (I have the mats and rice and everything: I'm all set)

I can exchange the following skills and gifts:

• Piano lessons
• How to budget your travel
• How to find the cheapest airflights known to mankind
• Clarinet lessons
• Basic sketching
• Beginners adult ballet
• Thai food
• Mexican food
• Gluten free/vegan baking
• Social media skills
• General fitness/healthy eating
• Tapas. 

Somewhere, there must be a match who wants to exchange what I have (essentially a greedy tummy who learnt how to cook shit) and has what I want.

Just a thought. 

Back to the book. 

Am I sad and depressed?

Other than a fact that I'm currently house sitting for a friend whose housemates all work for the civil service fast stream, the company I just left, the most depressing thing is that I feel like everything's a little pointless.

That's not to say that I'm sad, depressed or suicidal, it's just you kind of have a little more time on your hands so you start thinking about where it all went wrong/right (if, like me, you're still convinced that leaving your last job was the best thing you could do right now). Here's an example. I was sitting on the bus yesterday at 6pm.

Teenage girl to her grandmother: I had extra art class today but I had to leave early because I needed to go and take my lifeguard exam but then I realised that I had left my swimming costume in the dance studio during rehearsals.

That is exactly what my life was like approximately 5 1/2 years ago. Minus the dance and plus some piano lessons. All the people I've met who are unemployed so far are either moping, don't have any experience because they spent all their time getting drunk at university and doing nothing else, or just aren't applying to anything. I'm in denial, and am calling my new period of unemployment 'freelancing' until the point when I get a new job and I can breathe a sigh of relief that the unstructured days of yesteryear are over. (I actually love it, I just feel guilty that I love it rather than conceding to societal mores and working a 9-5 because I'm not currently getting paid enough to buy milk).

So occasionally you do wonder what the point of it all was. Those of us who have jobs mainly dislike them, some lucky ones love them, and some lucky people who have excellent connections have excellent jobs. Others decide to risk it, change the direction you're pointing in and try to start again.

As my friend Clare's wardrobe says: 'If you're not happy with where your direction is taking you, turn around.'