How to Overcome First Job Blues

A couple of years ago, I was spending each day sitting at my desk in a cramped, mouldy flat in Golders Green, where I was sharing a small kitchen and bathroom with four complete strangers. I was fresh out of college with an apparently useless master’s degree in English literature and what seemed to me at the time to be a very narrow skillset. I must have sent what felt like thousands of cover letters with no success, to the point where personalized rejection emails which mentioned my name were something to write home about.

It took me about four months to find my first job and it was hard. But what they don’t tell you about your first job: the struggle won’t end there.

Most people hate their first job. It’s normally somewhat relevant to your ideal career path but - unless you’re an engineer or a doctor - the pay will be miserable and you’ll still be miles away from doing the work you want to be. If this is you, and your first job is feeling like a catastrophic failure, don’t panic: there are things you can do to extricate yourself from this hellhole.

Turn down the pressure a notch and trust that you’re not going to be in that abysmal job forever, and that with each passing day, your CV is gaining gravitas (to recruiters). You may not be performing high precision surgery or running for presidency yet, but you are still learning valuable new skills, even if you don’t actually think you are, whether it’s how to apologise for a mistake you made at work in a professional manner, how to see a project through or even just how to work closely with others. Navigating the complex web of office politics can so be hard sometimes, the smallest thing can turn into a huge thing before you know it. (Read: office mugs are sacrosanct.)