Clever Clogs, but what for?

At the weekend, my very clever Daughter Two obtained her degree (as in, went to the ceremony and put on a silly hat and collected her certificate).

I’m sure she won’t mind me saying this, but a few years back none of us really thought she would go to Uni because she just wasn’t interested in being part of extended academia. Daughter One was the one that got nine ‘A’s and a couple of ‘A*’s at her GCSEs and went on to do the academic ‘A’ levels, and The Hubby’s Son One and Son Two were the ones who went to the posh Reigate Grammar School, so we thought our two eldest would get there first and Daughter Two would do some good job instead.

But to her credit, D2 stuck at it, studied hard and got her Degree in Business in the autumn, the first of our five children. This weekend was just the shindig and palaver which goes with it. As regards the others, D1 passed her vocational professional qualification in the autumn too, but that doesn’t have any ceremony attached to it, and S1 is now in the Metropolitan Police dealing the with miscreants and villains in Westminster. S2 is at university in Cardiff doing something clever with IT (although actually, from what he says, he spends much of his time DJ-ing and drinking), and S3 is just about to take ‘A’ levels then wants to go travelling before starting work.

Goodness knows what D2 is going to do now. She has a permanent job, in Morrisons in Oxted, and she is desperate to advance through the ranks to management where she can actually use some of the knowledge and skills that three years at university (and the associated debt) has bought her. They didn’t want her on their graduate programme last year, so she is trying to do it the hard way. But you can’t magic up vacancies, and competition is fierce. Maybe she’ll try for the graduate programme again this year, we’ll see.

D1 and S1 are already in work and both doing OK, although D1 struggles managing on her own with my grand daughter. Her employer reasonably understands, but Ruby starts school this year and that means shorter working hours to accommodate school hours, and less money. It’ll be hard, and she will need us all there to support her.

As for the others, well it’ll be a year or two before we have to worry, and they say employment prospects are improving, but I can’t say I see any real evidence for that. The Hubby has now been out of work and actively looking for another job for almost five months, and there is virtually nothing out there even if we set our sights lower than we really need. I feel some difficult times and tough decisions coming.

We all know things will get better eventually, and it is much better that our children have spent time doing something meaningful in academia which may give them an edge in the future rather than sitting around watching daytime TV because they can’t get any work, but it will take time to come back from the precipice we have all been teetering on and we are in for a few lean years. There is much talk on the TV of ‘the bank of Mum and Dad’ but in this direction the bank is already run dry, so they will have to manage on their own (or tap up their other parents, of course).

Let’s just hope that we can make it through the next year or two without anything disastrous, then that villa in the sun beckons. Roll on!