Intermission: We now take another step forward.

Hey folks,

This will be one of my briefest blogs.

I do not wish to run through my entire year as I said that this would be brief.
For Christmas I received an old model of the starship Enterprise. This brightened up my day exponentially.  It was the first Christmas in two years that I was present in the U.K. The first one in many years that I have spent with my family in Kings Sutton!

There is a lot on my mind at the moment but I know one piece of advice from Captain Picard that ought to guide us all into this new year.


http://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/55988766.jpg <- Had to remove the original image.

Update: Sir Patrick Stewart did this for New Years: http://i.imgur.com/pg5mpma.jpg

I told you that this blog would be quick.

Make sure to put your best foot forward and carpe diem.

Take care and have a Happy New Year.

Thank you for reading.

This was The Common Sense Eccentric and that was 2013 0_o

WAIT...my hair...growing it back and taking care of it properly!
Saving up for driving, becoming a teacher...those are pieces of my plan.

Chapter 9: Graduates & Jobs. Positive Notes.

Edit: After much thought I will stick to the U.K for now and look into becoming a teacher here. I have family that I care about in the U.K and I want to stay close to home.

This blog relates to a story that I saw in The Independent and has been influenced by my experiences as a graduate living in the U.K.

If you want to see the news story please follow this link:
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/dec/27/graduating-debt-no-job-lost-generation
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Graduates & Jobs. (A Positive Note.)


I work for a nice company that sells a lot of furniture and educational resources to schools/universities/the military/individual customers and any institution that may be looking into purchasing what we sell.

I work as an assistant at the moment and I find the job to be quite enjoyable. It is challenging at times as I am part of a team that handle phone calls  for placing orders. I was on the phone for over 30 minutes because a customer was placing a lengthy order. To an outsider this may seem boring but the people I work with are pretty great. I have also found myself learning a lot about the structure of academies. The biggest thing that blew my mind however was that when I was paid for my first month's worth of work I received 5x what I was receiving on JSA.

With that money I am able to help support my family in ways that the JSA does not allow. I am also able to consider making a savings account :D I want to save up a lot of money for a few big ideas that I have been having. A few of the folks  at work like my attitude because I'll take up any task and I don't see anything as "beneath me". (Albeit when I failed to get into Tesco. I was quite bitter and said the opposite as I read the letter...because I am a sore loser. I had grown very weary of applying for a dozen jobs each week from roles in janitorial work all the way up to publicising for events.)

The last few months have not all been grand though. A few people that I have spoken to are shocked with the work that I am doing. Those in academia are not surprised as they understand how difficult it is to get work after graduating.

I know a lot of people give graduates a hard time for doing jobs that do not really relate to their degree but we take what we can because life is precious. We seize any opportunity that comes our way because it will help us towards bigger & better things. I am happy to report that this is not naive idealism talking.

A man in my village was a road layer when he graduated from Aberystwyth University. Whilst we were walking back from the train station he told me that he has worked on an oil rig, in the army and has also taken up factory work. He now runs a successful building/construction firm. Also he studied the same degree...as me 0___o This man told me that things get better. He is worried about our generation though as there is a substantial pay gap between what the older generation currently earns and what we will earn at his age.

Some say that we are a lost generation. Doing jobs that make no sense and wasting our lives.
I remind those people that the same critics probably spoke of the Wright Brothers that way so please refrain from practising such pessimistic perspectives.

I think of our generation as more of a lost opportunity.
The older generations pushed us to go for university life but refused point blank to invest in the infrastructure that would require such a high amount of graduates.
Our Govt. keep raising the age of the pension too.
With living standards slipping and opportunities being scarce it can be daunting for us all.

There is no 100% guarantee that things will work out.
However by owning a degree we have access to more doors than those without.
I am in the process of saving up to do an IPGCE & another QTS qualification.
Any advice would be appreciated as an IPGCE does not confer QTS status but I would like both so I can teach both abroad and in the U.K.

Effectively this means I aim to gain a qualification that would enable me to teach internationally as a qualified teacher. I enjoyed teaching but I have no desire to apply for grants and live off of crumbs whilst aiming to become a professional teacher. When I acquire this qualification I could then take flight and recieve a salary that would help both myself and my family. I left my first year of China with £2,000! Imagine what I could have saved if I was working as a fully qualified teacher as opposed to the basic TEFL training.

I do understand why others may be confused by graduates working for furniture companies, multinational stores, Starbucks and so on. However we choose to work there because we have plans, we remain working there as we enjoy the work. We do have dreams and it was not to have some 3 year state funded holiday! We went to university to learn as much as we can about the things we love most and to help us create plans for getting there.

Such there have been hiccups along the way and we might not find ourselves in places we imagined but we have a dream. I am lucky that my family fully support my dream.

My mother aims to work in a museum after she graduates but the current cuts mean that in places like the Banbury Museum you may sometimes only find 1 member of staff present for a single day of the week! Our infrastructure is buggered to high heaven. Having a go at graduates however will not help as we will be the ones that will be expected to save it.

Therefore things will improve for graduates as our society needs us for we are the ones that dare to dream and strive to make those dreams come true. My dream is to raise everything up a notch. I see no sense in standing proud if the rest of our society crumbles. I want people to see that they have the power to change the world around them by simply realising that they have the power to change the world around them.

I did a few bits around the community whilst unemployed and the locals helped me see things clearer. Also those I was volunteering with fully understood the very things that I mentioned here. We differed on some points but they did not point the blame at us for choosing jobs outside of our degrees.

In short things will get better because we will make them better.

Have a great week,

and I hope that you all have a happy new year :)

Thanks for reading.

The Third Intermission: About Voting.

Voting is the bare minimum we can do in order to create change. Talking to our peers, organising ourselves into effective groups that can lobby our leaders/protesting in general is a more public/powerful way to push for change. I understand that we are angry about so many things but throwing away one's right to vote is to spit in the face of history and the people that fought for universal suffrage.


Voting is the bare minimum that we can do to bring about the change.
If so many of our generation are refusing to tick a simple box, how can we ever bring about a great political movement that would shake the foundations of our country?

We need to push for more accountability and protest when a great injustice takes place.
Throwing away one's vote however is like throwing a tantrum.
Sitting in a park holding a drum circle is an equally wasteful action as it only causes a nuisance for dog walkers and not the establishment. Occupy Parliament if you want to make a difference. Occupying public places only disturbs the public peace...not the politicians. We need to disturb our leaders and not our neighbours. We need to drive our leaders mad, not each other.

I disagreed with someone once about AV. They went one way and I choose another but in the end I respected their wishes and understood that democracy is not about getting what YOU want. It was a heated argument and we did not speak for a while but I failed to appreciate that democracy is about other views besides my own. (Any comment section on any newspaper will give you an idea of what the mistake I made) Voting is about ensuring that the majority of the electorate get what they voted for.

Naturally the existence of a coalition represents a power grab and undermines the legitimacy of everything I have just said but that is where protesting comes in. Other countries fight until they bleed. We just moan until our jaws ache and refuse to raise our backsides off the chair in order to tick a simple box. :(

You must become the change that you wish to see the world.
Together we have the power to save ourselves from the tyranny of democracy.
Refusing to vote empowers those that will get elected, regardless of whether or not you choose to vote I know that a dozen other people will and so those that lead us will represent a smaller and forever shrinking group of people.

Workers rights are being eradicated because we are failing to act upon our most basic right.
I know politics is emotional and hits upon our most personal thoughts about the world we all live in.
I ran in an election and lost. A few close supporters helped me pick myself back up again and now I write again.

If you disagree I understand but I refuse to cast away a basic right that others have fought so hard for.

Thank you for reading.
This was The Common Sense Eccentric.