Well done, you’ve finished your degree! Word of warning – those nightmares about forgetting to submit your dissertation NEVER STOP.
Anyway, the party is over and the dust has settled, so it’s time to start your first proper job in the real world. Say goodbye to books and hello to boardrooms. It’s the end of daily lie ins, and staying in your pyjamas til noon – unless you happen to work in a very liberal office, in which case we all hate you.
Instead, it’s time for some brutal learnings from your first post uni job. Such as:
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Everyone is obsessed with meetings
University seminars are basically a training ground for office meetings, and they’re made up of the same characters– the mysterious silent people who sit diligently writing notes versus the loud ones who ask questions for hours when everyone else just wants to go home. It’s quite likely that by your third week of work you’ll have attended a meeting about another meeting. Meetingception.
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Your inbox will become your life
You probably used to talk to people at university. It’s quite possible that you will end up in an office where all conversation is exclusively conducted via email, from requests to open the window to organising the tea round. The peak of passive aggressive office behaviour is putting a read receipt on your emails. The correct way to respond to these emails is, ‘OMG I READ IT. YOU’RE NOT MY MUM.’
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Office life = time to learn a new language
SMS, CMS, DCMS, B2B, OMG WTF. No matter how many slang terms you think you know, they are nothing compared to the vast and complex languages of offices. Be prepared to spend hours frantically googling acronyms and being perplexed by buzz words.
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Commuting is not actually that bad
Commuting gets a bit of a bad rep. Yes, it’s cramped and hot. HOWEVER you also get a nice bit of time to read your book or listen to music AND you a whole new crop of strangers to eye flirt with over your paper every morning! Maybe one day you’ll even make Rush Hour Crush.
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Tax is terrifying
Of course you knew you’d have to start paying tax eventually, and that it’s crucial to the smooth running of the country etc, etc. Whatever extravagance you’d planned to splurge your first pay cheque on will be swiftly scaled down when you realise after tax, NI, and your student loan you’re left with enough to cover rent, bills, and Supernoodles – if you’re lucky.
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Pret is the destroyer budgets
In your first month of working it’s compulsory that you drop at least £7 a day in your local Pret. When the bank statement arrives and you realise you’ve spent £140 on baguettes you’ll quickly decide to bring packed lunches from now on. But you won’t forsake the morning cappuccino, you can’t possibly work without it.
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You become really good at pretending to be busy
If you don’t look busy people will come over and give you things to do, which will almost certainly involve making pivot tables or using a database that crashes when you press more than one button at a time. Therefore you will quickly develop the ability to look very busy all the time. A good way to do this is to always have a spreadsheet open on your computer, frown a lot at your screen (preferably get two screens so you can look even more busy), and consistently mention how busy you are when chatting to colleagues in the canteen.
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Picture: Ada Hamza
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.