Life after Graduation (?)

Today I read an article in the Guardian and I freaked. Not visibly (I'm in the library), but my head  went into a fatalistic overdrive, churning out all the ways in which I can avoid the horrors of being unemployed 30 months after graduating. Despite the heights of my organisation - demonstrated for you lot in a previous post - I feel like an authoritarian regime whose legitimacy is being challenged, the empire I've created around me about to crash around my ears. I've also started getting rejections from multiple law vacation scheme applications, and while this is an inevitable - and partly necessary - part of the process, it unsettles me somewhat.

I have (obviously) looked at options outside of law, but they're a bit to scarce and limiting for me. Some require me to go to China, whereas others mean I won't be able to go to China for another 3+ years! Obviously I'm going to apply for the Civil Service fast stream (just as everyone should in my opinion), but  I was thinking about other civil service jobs that would use my language skills, like MI5 and GCHQ. But then I can't go to Chinnaaaaa, and also my Chinese probably isn't good enough, and also they sound quite boring.
I've mentioned Bloomberg before and while that sounds like a genuinely interesting viable option, if I have to work in the finance department instead of my preferred choice (data & news) I think I'd just walk out the door.

I've also decided to apply to be a British Council Language Assistant...in China. For me, this is another 'back up', but it's actually really competitive, quite hard to get into and a lot of my friends are also applying - some have been working on their applications for years! It's a proper, fancy job with a well establish, we'll-pay-for-your-training kinda organisation. It's only for 10 months and I think I could handle that much longer in the wonderful land, especially if I get a placement like Chengdu (where the pandas are). At only 20 hours a week, I'd also have lots of time to explore...and improve my language skills, of course. Jardines are another company offering seemingly wonderful opportunities, but they're another company that require me to move to Hong Kong tomorrow and their training programme lasts for four years! It does sound genuinely interesting, but I think you have to have good numeracy skills (which can be practised, of course) and one part of the application requires you to submit a video...I don't know how I feel about this.

What about taking an Intership? Well, on that note the oh so famous Always an Intern blog has enough to put people off going down that road out of anything out of...well, not quite desperation - read it and you'll see what I mean. Even why one of my own good friends warns against the irritations of unpaid internships and a relatively planless near future in her blog. Although having said all this, one should never turn down an internship if it is your only option - it might be your foot in the door for getting your 'dream job'.

I could go to University in China, with an all-inclusive-style grant from the government...Although that's more of a last resort than a viable option. I do want to go back into education at some point (because I love learning and my dream is to be one of the academics that they consult in dusty offices with piles of books and a leather swivel chair in a really famous university because I have all the knowledge of the potential of democratisation in China), but not just quite yet. Remember the Fulbright dream kids - that dream's gonna cost a lot of dollar (literally).

I got an admonishing call from a friend almost immediately after voicing my first wave of panic however - she assured me that I do have the skills, time management and organisational, to secure that elusive post-graduate position. If anyone can, you can Edi. Another friend just told me to shush. But despite their encouraging words, my fears were not completely assuaged. The long and short of it is, I know too many people with too many skills struggling to find jobs and it scares me. On the other hand, I also know a lot of people who have succeeded in securing things like training contracts and even real graduate jobs straight out of Uni, so they do, indeed, exist. It's just not black and white, you know?

Anyway, if worst comes to worst, I'll just run away to Dalian and teach English for 3-10 years. Who's with me?