The graduate slump

So you've finished, you're free—now what? Incessant wallow and confusion, that's what!

pic unrelated – was titled slump, so I went with it

In 2016, the Walden Institute of Social Sciences recognised 'The Graduate Slump' as a natural post-graduate phenomenon—it's basic premise being a feeling of misdirection with freedom and accomplishment. The study followed a single subject through three months of graduate status, noting the visible effect determined by termination of formal education.

When formal education has been a constant in your life for 18 years, the completion of this structure is something that left me feeling a little dumbfounded. When your compass has always pointed true north to the top of the education tree and upon reaching that point you are now surveying the graduate landscape. To know which direction you should jump is certainly a task of which I'd never known the likes. It scared me a little.

Around me, I can see various friends with abudances of talent, given enough freedom to live a life without any. For me, I get a slight 'silver spoon' approach to this as I had a job lined up straight after graduation but I can see given 36 avenues of direction, choosing the correct and career inducing path is about as easy as cleaning a bag of chips off the floor before your mildly overweight labrador scoffs at least half.

All this freedom and indecision very quickly depreciates into a slump, a graduate slump. The feeling and mindset of great confusion hosted by all your achievements. Finding yourself sitting doing nothing because there is too much you can do; not seeing the woods for the trees, and every other cliché statement you can think of.

Freelance, Agencies, In-House, Murder? 

After escaping three years of immense pressure, pushing you towards your future—you are now stood knee-deep in the middle of the field, THE FIELD OF WORK!!!! IN THE FARM OF INDUSTRY!!! spooky.

Now you are thinking – Yes, I know this feeling. What should I do?

Well, honestly you shouldn't take your answers from me, but I'll give you some if you'd like it. I mean, you are taking advice from a disgruntled young fellows poorly curated internet blog, so perhaps you should really seek advice from someone else.

Just do something. Anything. It doesn't matter if it's shite, because if it is, so what.

The only way to stop yourself from not doing anything is to bloody well do something—make a dance to some terrible Abba B-Side, draw all over someones suburban property or set fire to your right leg whilst reciting Hippocrates in a slam poetry fashion. 

It doesn't matter what it is, just do something, put it on instagram, put it on a blog and reap in the moneyz boi. Or alternatively you could just do nothing—it's only £40,000 of debt after all.

Be an arsehole (a poem)

This is not based on an real life people, just people in general. A range of rhyming words to live by—you arsehole.

Most of the time you should be nice,

Most of the time it's really rather hard,

I see your emails of multiple 'minor' changes,

It's bloody 10pm you sloshing tub of lard.

This started out great,
I was even excited to begin,
The desk holds three beers,
One pasty, a litre of Gin.

I don't want to send a nasty email,
But I find it hard to resist,
It's later than I'd like to admit,
"One more thing" your email hissed.

How about bloody well no,
I can't make diamonds from your coal,
"Feck off, I'm going to sleep"
You get to sleep if you can be an arse with a hole.

It's not enough just to be an arse,
It's too common, in both the human and vole,
You might loose this job,
But you will get sleep this evening,
So pretty please,
Be an arsehole.

Pingu was an arsehole and he did alright.

There is no such thing as a female designer

Like The Jabberwocky or a working-class tory—Female Designers DO NOT exist.

I know what you are thinking, I've got ovaries and I'm a designer; or even shouting Paula Scher repeatedly at the top of your lungs. PAULA SCHER! PAULAAAA SCHERRRRRRR!

The point I'm making here is not that having XX chromosomes blocks you from using adobe software, but that in an industry developed through creativity we shouldn't accept that anyone who choses to follow the design career path is anything other than a designer.

It sounds a little counter intuitive but if you give me the chance, I'll explain myself to you. I think it's easier to understand that there is no such thing as a female designer when you analyse the last time you heard someone introduced to you as a male designer. This all stems from a debate that's been roaring for a while, but was ignited for me when Prince's touring band brought light to it, lit up by burning torches of anger and frustration.

3RDEYEGIRL were the band that toured with Prince until his recent death, and would you believe it that band holds no male members—which the media can't help but highlight. Rolling Stone reports Meet Prince's New All-Female Band just like ever other media source, of which none of them were lying at any point. But the issue here is something the band addressed themselves; why are they listed as all-female?

Why is that point noted? As if it's important that there are no male members in the band. I mean, how on earth could they have done so well being all-female, just female; they are women for goodness sake! It's vitally important that we note that women have achieve this on their own, they are female musicians of course, not musicians—being just musicians could mean they are also male, and clearly they are not male.

As illustrated by others, and now dissected by myself—there are no such things as female designers, they are the unicorns of the design industry. Female Typographers and Female Illustrators also don't exist, I'm quite sure.

I want to make it clear that any creative should not be defined by their gender, let alone labeled and assumed. Female Designers, are designers and have only the 'female' addition because it proves poignant to define that they are not the standard, they are not male—pointing the finger that by definition they could not compare to normal designers, pointing the finger to a male dominated industry.

You may hear the term 'We need feminism' or 'I need feminism' but I believe, if you are a human of this earth and just by chance you are a designer too, you need feminism because; no woman on earth walks up to another person and refers to herself as a Female Designer. So it's time others stopped doing so.