Signing On

Swallowing my pride and signing up for the dole – sorry, Jobseeker's Allowance - lived down to all my expectations. The staff had little time for me, the vicinity was littered with halflings in Lacoste trackies, and the woman who processed my application managed to project a perfect combination of hating her job and being relieved that she wasn't sat in my seat. One thing that shouldn't have surprised me though, especially given my addiction to stalking the BBC News website, was the amount of 'older' people claiming the dole. Amongst my fellow uni drop-outs and other forms of failure there was a prominent cast of over 40's, a crude reminder of the fact that I had chosen to leave education and pursue employment during the highest unemployment levels since 1994. For those who don't know me, this is just the kind of thing that I do. 


To receive Jobseeker's Allowance one must 'sign on' once a fortnight. This involves visiting the local Job Centre to explain the ways in which you have been searching for a job to a disbelieving clerk before being lectured and patronised for a bit by said clerk. Then it’s time to skulk home to constantly refresh your online bank account, waiting for the glorious moment when the government transfers your money through and you can treat yourself to a subway/pack of cigarettes/day at the penny arcade, or whatever your preference may be. As it happened, I was out of town for my first signing on session, meaning that I had to sign a form promising that I'd be willing to jump on the first train/plane/hobo's back to get home if Primark were to call offering me a job and asking me to start immediately. It's safe to say that I wasn't feeling optimistic about this happening, so I signed the form with the promise of phoning in at 9am on Tuesday to arrange my next appointment. 


Tuesday arrived and as my alarm sounded I was aware that I was seriously ill (whoever came up with the idea that “a cold” should always be preceded with the words “just a” obviously never had one!) But, like the trouper that I am, I picked up the phone and dialled the Job Centre… to be greeted with the busy tone. And for the rest of the morning, between doing an impersonation of a foghorn into tissues and sipping on honey and lemon drinks, I hit redial and listened to the busy tone again and again. By lunch time the effort had exhausted me and I crawled into bed and under my duvet to feel sorry for myself.


Wednesday brought better luck. The phone was answered on the first attempt and in my excitement I almost missed the demand for an explanation as to why I hadn't called the day before. Apparently I should have crawled out of my sick bed and paid the £2.10 bus fare (each way) to visit the Job Centre to make an appointment. So I crawled out of my sick bed and paid the £2.10 bus fare (each way) and visited the Job Centre where I completed a form declaring that I had been too ill the day before to crawl out of my sick bed and pay the £2.10 bus fare (each way) to visit the Job Centre


So all the traipsing back and forth to the Job Centre, paying fares I couldn't afford and filling forms that have at least ensured there will be no redundancies at the paper mills has paid off and I have now received my first payment of Job Seeker’s Allowance. The thing that I do feel I've taken away from this whole experience, apart from the money, is a colossal amount of motivation to find a job and to never have to attend the Job Centre again. 


Oh, I've also come away with the slight inkling that the cold, unwelcoming attitude of the staff at the Job Centre is all part of the government’s cunning plan to reduce the number of people signing on…

Moving Home

One of my main considerations when making the decision whether to drop out of uni was if I'd be able to stomach moving back home. I had left home just three months earlier, my naive eyes bright with fantastical expectations for the future. How easy it is to romanticise when making the slightest bit of progress in life, whether it be moving away to uni or finally understanding how a mortgage works.

The day before I left I had taken a moment alone to stand in my room and look around, forcing myself to be sentimental about the little things. Y'know, like the spot of carpet that my best friend vomited on after a drinking game we invented called 'Your turn to drink! Now your turn to drink!'. Or the lamp that I accidentally headbutted after deciding to 'just close my eyes for a second' two words into a 1500 word essay that was in for the next day. I'm pretty sure that as I stared around the room that had been a trusty den for the majority of my life, my internal monologue sounded something like this; 'Well this is it. Fare thee well sweet bedroom. You haven't just been a place to sleep, you've been a friend. But I must depart. It will be three years before I once again caress the gentle sheets of your bed, three years before I lie groaning in anguish on your soothing carpet after a heavy night out'. Or maybe I was just thinking 'fuck, I'm going tomorrow, I should really start packing'. But let's not get hung up on details. Either way, as I stared around my room the one thing that I was sure of was that for the next three years this wouldn't be my home. If I'd known that it would actually only been three months then I wouldn't have wasted perfectly good rollercoaster tycoon time on such Hollywood inspired sentiment. 

It's very strange being home, even after just three months living away. I miss things like not having to clean up after myself straight away (or ever), and not having to creep around after stumbling in at 6am, hair in a tangle after army crawling through a hedge to 'rescue' a traffic cone which I then left in the kitchen as a 'gift to the house'. These things are quite easy to get used to; in fact I'm pretty sure that after one day, any other way of living seemed bizarre and out of the ordinary. I only lived as a student for a short while. Now every time I see pictures on Facebook showing the fate of an unlocked room I'm hit with a wave of nostalgia. 

But I'm home now, and while the notion of settling back in is not quite what I would have planned, a closer look makes me feel that I was maybe wrong to condemn the idea so quickly. To cut the bullshit, I can't help having suspicions that the real reason that I dreaded having to move back home so much wasn't because it seemed nonsensical to throw away my new found freedom. If I really delve into my inner psyche, I realise that it's the moving home, not the dropping out, that seemed to me like a mark of failure. But I was wrong to think this. I have no plans to be home for good. I think that it's better to see it more as a stopgap; a reason to work harder to ensure that in a few months' time I've gathered the resources that mean I'll be able to move out. And who knows, maybe in three years' time when everyone's leaving uni jobless and in debt I'll finally feel like I'm in the better place. Or maybe I just need to be committed for a rare case of misplaced optimism.

Dropping Out

So I did it. I took the plunge and dropped out of uni, branding myself as a social pariah, destined to sit on the couch for the next 20 years watching repeats of 'Lost' and complaining that dole money isn't enough. Luckily, this isn't what I have planned and while, like many, I do dream of watching 'Lost' from start to finish, I would much rather do this in between working as opposed to instead of. See, uni drop-outs get a bad press. At least people who don't go to uni in the first place don't have 'the cheek' to suppose they might just have it in them. But drop-outs? Stupidly optimistic fools. I'm not sure if I would call myself an optimist though. Most of the time I find my brain battles between blind optimism and outright nihilism. Some days I find myself practising my Oscar's speech in my head, while other days I find myself wondering whether there's a demand for flat-chested, clumsy girls in any local lap dancing bars. So what possessed me to go to university in the first place?

Well, firstly there's the obvious reason that 'everyone does it'. Okay, so there was the odd person at college who would sit there filing their nails while the rest of us bit our own nails till they bled, frustrated at the sheer sadistic nature of the UCAS application process. But these were the people that we sniggered at, safe in the knowledge that while we sailed through uni they'd be shampooing a dog during their 'animal beauty course' at the local community college. Hindsight is a cruel thing. I also like to pin a little of the blame on all the supportive people in my life. The people who tricked me into thinking that I was intelligent enough for such an endeavour as university. Every time a teacher said to me 'You're capable of getting all A's, if only you'd just put the effort in' the smug little voice in my head said 'Oh yeah, I'm so damn capable'. Turns out that if enough people throw buzz words like 'bright' and 'talented' in your direction then it's rather easy to adopt the delusion that you'll sail through uni, completing essays in your sleep. Sadly this is not the case. 

Looking back at my reasons for attending uni makes me feel like a bit of a dope. I should have just cut out the middle man and not attended in the first place. But what's done is done, and I will forever be a drop-out. So how does it feel? Initially, refreshing. At least it is once the fear of being a failure all my life before dying curled around a rubbish bin, telling people that I could have been as big as Spielberg passes. But now I'm jobless, penniless and my naive expectation that I'd get a job in the first week of being home has been replaced by slight panic. So for now I must focus on the positives. Like, at least I'm no longer paying £800 a semester for accommodation. And at least I know that if I leave my laptop unattended for more than 2 minutes nobody will decide to profess my love of blumpkins to the whole of Facebook. Unless my mother gets extra cheeky. Then there's a serious risk.