You know when you’re 18 and deciding on your future? Your
parents are probably around offering you some sort of guidance. ‘Don’t do
that,’ they’ll say when you scroll over the creative courses on the university
website. ‘There’s no money in that, no future. Do something more academic
instead. Maybe become an accountant. Do you know anything about being a
doctor?’ Of course at the time you completely ignore this advice. You don’t
want to be academic, you don’t care about the future and you definitely don’t
want to be a doctor because they use needles and needles are basically the
devil in metal form. No, what you want to do is unleash your inner Picasso. You
want to go to Art College and paint naked women, maybe spend a summer in France
eating croissants and start wearing berets. You could totally pull a beret
off. You want to go to university and
discover yourself and you can’t do that by doing a proper subject, it just
won’t work. Instead you’ll have to do a subject your granddad won’t understand
like Creative Advertising (guilty) or Contemporary Lens Media. You’ll have to
ask the government to fund three years of your life spent studying Illustration
or Graphic Design, anything so long as it won’t lead to a definite career path
afterwards. Anything so long as when you graduate you’ll be stuck with a degree
that makes you feel awesome but makes all recruitment agencies and potential
employees look at you like you’re an alien speaking a different language.
Fortunately for those of us that did decide to go down this
less profitable route of study there are a number of websites set up to help us
find work. They list all the jobs you might be interested in based on the
criteria you have filled out and the skills you have listed.
Less fortunately nearly all of these websites are absolute
bollocks. Below is a list of jobs that have shown up in my search results today
and the reasons behind why they make me want to hurt things. Enjoy.
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| Square man. Round hole. |
BUSINESS INFORMATION MANAGER.
There are three things I find off putting about this job.
Those three things are the words ‘business,’ ‘information’ and ‘manager.’
INDUSTRIAL SEWING MACHINIST.
Do you live in a post-apocalyptic world where robots are
coming to try and take over humanity and our depleted army desperately need new
clothes making so they can continue the fight for our survival as a race? No,
you don’t. Therefor this job sounds shit.
PRODUCTION MANAGER.
I knew someone who worked in production once. I say once, they've since had a nervous breakdown and killed several small dogs. That might
be a lie but whatever happened I don’t know them anymore and I can only assume
that’s because they’re mentally unstable because of the work they did.
COMMERCIAL LOCATION COORDINATOR.
Problem number 1: The word commercial. Problem number 2: The
rest of it. How do you coordinate locations? That is not the sort of question
you should be asking if you get an interview for this job.
EDUCATION AND PARTICIPATION PRODUCER.
I have literally no idea what this combination of words
means, nor do I have the motivation to find out because it sounds so dull
there’s a chance I might cry.
INTERNATIONAL DANCE PRODUCER.
Alright, this one sounds fun. I’d be bad at it though
because the last time I danced flu broke out.
TICKET ADMINISTRATOR.
Pretty sure I could have got a job at a cinema giving
tickets out before I spent an absolute fortune on my degree and subsequent MA. Just
because this job is at a theatre where, I imagine, creative things happen does
not make it appropriate as a job for a creative person.
There you go. Those are the pick of the bunch today. These
jobs are going to be fantastic for certain people, they’re going to pay well
and offer years of fulfillment But for me and people of my ilk they’re going to
kill a little bit of our souls. We've all got talent, we've all got a desire to
work and prove ourselves but what we haven’t got is a decent opportunity to do
that. Not yet.
PS: The beautiful image up there was done by the very talented Sally Townsend. If neither her or I find a creative career we'll have to resort to creating charming but dark children's books together.