So, everyone who passed their final year of an undergraduate degree this year has graduated, the A-level results have been and gone, and the conclusion from the media and business sectors that run this country this year is:
- Having a degree is shit
- Some students aren’t allowed to do them!!!1!! (but don’t worry because they’re crap)
As it turns out (who knew?!?!), no one who has ever been successful in the world of business, the arts, government or academia has even so much as stepped accidentally onto a part of the pavement technically part of a university campus in a major city centre. The last Labour government fooled us: degrees are in fact massive success sponges that will leave an entire generation unable to ever find a job. And what with all their benefits being cut, they’d better find one soon! But they can’t because there aren’t any anymore and probably never were.
So, what can you do to counteract the negative effects of having a degree on your future career prospects? So far top government think tanks have come up with the following:
- Get an internship during your degree
- Get a summer placement during your degree (no one is sure whether or not this is distinct from an internship or not)
- Take a gap year, and use it to volunteer in your chosen field or do some travelling to expand your horizons, but only if you do this BEFORE your degree
The crucial thing to remember with all three of these is that if you’ve already finished your degree and not done any of them, you ARE fucked and may as well give up on applying for any graduate jobs and instead go for those ones giving hand jobs for pennies that you see right in the back of the Classified Ads.
Well, my new idea won’t help you if you’ve already finished your degree either, but it does have an advantage over the government’s ‘Big Three’ as it is less focused around stockpiling opportunities and networking and instead makes the link between beefing up one’s CV and intense physical pain explicit.
*** OK SO THIS IS THE IDEA ***
What we do is, in every student union across the country, is set up a room with a large wall covered in huge, deadly whips that are controlled with a pedal. The aspiring graduate job-attainer goes along to this wall, pays their money, takes off their shirt, and stands there whipping themselves by pressing down on the pedal. The facility can take up to 20 students at a time, although it will still probably be over-subscribed, so only the most impressive candidates will get any time on the whipping-wall at all. 15 hours of self-flagellation is deemed to be equivalent to one internship/summer placement/gap year. Photos must, however, be provided of the student’s back immediately after each flogging to check that it went deep enough into the flesh.
Alternatively, we rig up a lot of hoops and–
*** DO YOU SEE THE SATIRE ELEMENT OF THIS? ITS BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO DO! THEY PROMISED YOU THE WORLD, THEY PROMISED YOU RICHES BEYOND YOUR WILDEST DREAMS OR AT LEAST JOB SECURITY ONE YOU HAD A DEGREE BUT YOU DON’T HAVE IT AND YOU NEVER WILL BECAUSE THEY KNOWINGLY DEBASED THE VALUE OF HAVING A DEGREE BY EXPANDING THE UNIVERSITY SECTOR TOO GENEROUSLY THEY LIED TO YOU BE MORE ANGRY ABOUT THIS ***
Compulsory Meat Raffle 