Londonward

This isn’t going at all how I envisioned it would. First, my fun-loving bohemian flatmates have managed to somehow screw up the council tax payment so that we are now either due in court or have to cough up extra money. For once, me being piss-poor at registering for anything I have to comes to my advantage, as I’m not actually on the list of the council tax payees for this place. However, it’s still unfortunate and because I have informally agreed to participate in the council tax (I just consider it an extra thing in my rent) so I think I’ll have to cough up the court avoidance fee.

The internet connection we got is, in theory, pretty good. In practice, I think the architecture of the house is giving me grief with connections, as I seem to lose connectivity every few minutes. It may be just me typing in my bed that makes it flaky, but I’m directly above the modem on the next floor up - there shouldn’t be that bad an obstruction to disrupt the signal.

Oh, and another thing. Work. I had somehow envisioned me working nearly full time over summer, as ever since I started at my part-time job people had been telling me good things about the money. Now my boss has posted a schedule that people can tack their desired shifts on. But get this: He actually says “for the time being, please do not take consecutive days.” What?! So not only would I be splitting a five-day work week 4 ways (as there are four of us), it would mean I wouldn’t be able to split it in the most sensible possible way (have one full week at work, one week off, say) that would allow me to actually have some holiday time as well.

I somehow didn’t see this coming. I knew there would be less shifts to go around during the summer, but also thought there would be less people staying on. I’m still a bit dazed from all this, as I’ve just woken up. In any case, it looks like I’ll have to find a second job to cover my expenses of staying in London. And how will I respond to the email from my boss? I’d need to indicate my availability for shifts on specific (non-consecutive) days that would fix my schedule and therefore prevent me from planning for any contingency. How is one to deal with this kind of situation? Damn.

A guy who works part-time in the same department as I do decided he was going to quit come exam season. He’s been doing rounds, filling public room printers with paper and toner, getting paid for 10 hours a week. He told me that he will no longer be working after mid-March, which is when term ends.

He said that he wants to concentrate 100% on his exam preparation, because if he doesn’t do as well as he would want to, he would blame the part-time work he’d been doing. I told him that maybe working at least some hours would make him concentrate on studying more efficiently, but he was adamant. There was no way he would work over the exam period, which for him extends from the month-long Easter break and the run-up to exams in May and June. I don’t feel the same way; in honesty, I can’t afford to think that way. But I can’t help thinking whether concentrating on studying exclusively would push my grades up.

That’s the kind of University this is. End-of-year grades and results matter to so many, because they directly affect chances of getting the highest-profile internship. This colleague of mine is a law student, and is coldly ranking the highest-profile law firms found in London, only setting for the very best. I’d settle for just a relevant internship. After all, then you can keep moving up. Right? Right?

Internship fever is beginning to gather steam in us second year students. People are dashing to careers presentations by big companies every other night, with some of my friends asking me why I won’t join them. Somehow I never connected two and two but tonight it clicked: they’re thinking far ahead, past graduation time. The people salivating at the thought of an (unpaid) summer internship are really just looking forward to an easier time in finding a graduate job.

Today’s issue of the Beaver was the first one I actually read through, down to the careers pullout in the middle. It had some interesting testimonials about both applying for and working in internship jobs. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to find myself writing applications for junior analysts positions at investment banks, but the stories of working for the likes of DFID are pretty inspiring.

To be honest, I have no chance of accepting, or indeed applying for, an unpaid internship. I live off savings even though I have a part-time job through the year. The “best” jobs are, of course, the ones where you work in a character-building, unpaid positions and get the best kind of experience - a luxury I can’t afford. However, I also can’t afford to work for another summer in a dead-end job.

I guess it’s part of a bigger issue that I’m a bit loath to discuss here, or yet. Suffice to say it has to do with aims, aspirations and drive.

I went to get a National Insurance number. I called the office to book my appointment way back in mid-September. I had to forego attending the launch event of the GEO-4 because of it, so I was a little disappointed. There was no way I could reschedule the interview to get the number, though - a friend of mine had called them to get an NI number because he just got a job, and was told to come in December.

I arrived a god half an hour early, which evidently was a good thing. After having been shown where to go by a loitering security guard, I was escorted through some corridors to an office with many desks. The Jobcentre representative, yusuf, sat me down and asked me for all my documentation. It was a good thing I’d taken everything, including all my correspondence on the matter. After he ran through what I had brought, he began filling out a multi-page form with a strange, calligraphy-style handwriting.

I watched as he went through my previous addresses, the dates I’d come into and left the UK as well as the details of my job. Any answers I gave to his questions were met with an approving high-pitched chuckle. At one point, he looked up from his writing, asking me what I study - was it IT?

“No, Environmental Policy,” I said, “I keep that and work separate for now.”

“Oh, I bet you do!” he chuckled and resumed his writing until he remarked, “Environment… very busy field these days.”

I nodded approvingly, and he continued, “The LSE must be good with that, they’re the best in Development Studies.”

“I suppose so,” I replied.

When we were done, he asked me to take a seat in the waiting area until he could get my documents checked and the application confirmed by another person. As I did so, I came to sit across from a man who was speaking hurriedly into a phone in a hushed voice. “Wish me luck,” he said. “Give me some luck” he breathed into the phone as he finished. Just as he put the phone down, a big English guy, another JobCentre employee came up to him and said, “Sir, let’s go. Follow me, we’ll have a nice little chat.” The words on paper were nice enough, but his tone wasn’t. They went out of the door, probably into a more private room.

Thankfully, I just had to sit and wait until I was called to another big waiting room and was given my documents. Now all that remains is to wait - 6 weeks, apparently. I may have to bear the price of getting paid and having to pay extra tax due to a lack of a NI number. After all, I’ll be able to claim it back in a year. Hopefully.