hard decision work related

[Pat "5mph"]

Imo it's the night shift that's causing you extreme tiredness.
I am notorious for working silly hours, even now, at 53, sometimes I don't take a day off for weeks, but I make sure there's time to sleep between shifts.
The most tiring job I had was night shift, I was only in my late 20's, felt like a total zombie, probably because the night turn was followed by a day shift.
This really causes chaos in one's body clock.

 

[screenman]

I would think it is the 20+ hours a week training that is the problem.

 

[Brandane]

At risk of getting political, maudlin or anything else...is this what modern Britain has become for many people ?
Things were better 30 years ago, stable hours, a proper job(no offence Jamma, I hope you know what I mean), a future....a house.
For a lot of people, these simple things are just a dream nowadays...and we're poorer as a nation for it.

Unfortunately you are spot on, and I'm glad I'm not starting out in the job market now. I was talking to a young girl just last week, an honours graduate with a psychology degree who is working part time in a leisure centre as a general assistant. She reckons she will need a second degree to have any chance of getting a "proper" job in her field.

Compare that to 1978 when I left school with 8 x "O" levels. I decided I wanted to go to sea. I wrote to about 10 companies, each one replied. Applied to 3 of them and got interviewed by all. Ended up working for P&O as a navigation officer cadet. The only choice I had to make was between engineering and navigating. I made the wrong choice!

If you were struggling for work you just went and knocked on the door of the local shipyard....

Most young people I know are in a similar situation to the OP, with 2 or more part time jobs which offer little in the way of long term prospects. Most seem quite happy with their lot, for now. Their expectation level is much lower too.

 

[PhilDawson8270]

Unfortunately you are spot on, and I'm glad I'm not starting out in the job market now. I was talking to a young girl just last week, an honours graduate with a psychology degree who is working part time in a leisure centre as a general assistant. She reckons she will need a second degree to have any chance of getting a "proper" job in her field.

She will need more than that! if she wants to be clinical and work with patients. She will need a masters, then an on-job doctorate. Then be lucky with the few jobs there are available.

If she wants in to research she will need a Masters, and a PhD. Mrs is just coming to the end of her Psychology PhD, and even then, no idea what work will even be available when she completes, or where in the country any openings will be!

 

[Firestorm]

My step daughter chose to do a psych degree when she decided that her english degree wasnt going to get her the career / life she wanted , so spent two years converting at East London. Then moved to Bristol for her Phd , 3 years later she qualified and after several different roles, including two year commute to Birmingham she is now settled in a decent job in Bristol hospital and is very satisfied, albeit in difficult roles in cancer units.
I reckon it took about 10 years or so since she decided to change and it was hard , but she is certainly where she wants to be now.

 

[SpokeyDokey]

I must know different young graduates to some members on here. Off the top of my head I know these all in there mid-late 20's;

Medicine Graduate working in Oncology.

Business Finance graduate working as PA to CEO of a very large company.

Chemistry graduate working in a very well paid job with Kelloggs.

Business Administration graduate working for Mars (who are also sponsoring her through Harvard).

Law & Economics graduate (she has a cracking job with Mercedes Benz Australia).

Marketing graduate (Masters) employed by a very high profile advertising agency and on a fast track management program.

All very much full-time and with decent careers ahead of them.

 

[marinyork]

Excellent insight. Glad i got away.

So am I. Same pay, vastly less tiring and less stressful job. Chances of getting a promotion in old job (in terms of pay) roughly one in ten. Chances of getting a promotion in new job roughly about half. I have in fact already been promoted and will get a payrise on finishing a qualification. Not that that is the be all and end all, but averaged over everyone that rate is important.

Stuff was getting worse and worse before I left. A lot of advertised vacancies were 4am starts for minimum wage. Understandably people were leaving these jobs very quickly to work for 'bad' companies who paid better and had less anti-social hours. You can read about all the cuts being made in retail in 2015 and 2016, a lot of its public domain.

 

[ayceejay]

The funny thing is that if you ask anyone who runs a landscaping business what the labour situation is like they will tell you that it is impossible to find reliable workers and someone who shows initiative and can work unsupervised is a rare bird. I don't think there is much sense talking about higher education to this young lad but if he wanted to find a job in construction or landscaping there would be no problem - I can't guarantee this will cure his tiredness though

 

[marinyork]

I must know different young graduates to some members on here. Off the top of my head I know these all in there mid-late 20's;

Next time you go in a coffee shop, supermarket, building site, chuggers on the high street or any kind of job ask them whether they are a graduate. You might need to think of a way of phrasing it but most people will tell you. Most people won't broadcast it but they will tell you. You'll be amazed who you meet.

 

[SpokeyDokey]

Next time you go in a coffee shop, supermarket, building site, chuggers on the high street or any kind of job ask them whether they are a graduate. You might need to think of a way of phrasing it but most people will tell you. Most people won't broadcast it but they will tell you. You'll be amazed who you meet.

All I'm saying is that many graduates go on to have good careers. I've met many youngsters (and recruited a good number) with decent degrees who have gone on to have/are having decent careers and some have done extremely well for themselves.

It's not all doom and gloom in the graduate jobs marketplace.

If a graduate does end up working in a coffee shop ad-infinitum maybe they need to reflect inwards and ask why they are in that position. A degree is not an automatic passport to career success especially if the graduate does not possess the skills required (or at least aptitude to develop them) for the workplace environment.

Similarly, if a graduate is one or more of the following: inherently lazy, cynical, filled with an inflated sense of self-worth or lacking in motivation per se then maybe they too need to ask themselves some hard questions.

Maybe some of the degree laden coffee shop workers simply need to get off their backsides, wise up and realise that the world is not going to come to them and they need to take the initiative themselves.
.

 

[screenman]

Two of my kids have degrees and they seem to be doing well, as do their mates. I agree in many ways with the above post by Spokey.

 

[marinyork]

[QUOTE 4280369, member: 9609"]so do you have different levels of a degree, and what is an honours degree ?[/QUOTE]

Yes, in old school people used to emphasize the 'honours' bit and there was quite pompous language such as 'first' degree and 'second degree'. This generally isn't used too much any more and quite frowned upon in some circles. We aren't in the 1950s where people put Norman Stanley Fletcher BSc on a plaque next to their door knocker. There are foundation degrees and other degrees that aren't honours.

There are three levels (sometimes called cycles) of degrees and there has been a process of comparison between EEA countries. The thing that generally causes confusion is things like integrated master's degrees or more unusual ones. Plenty of degrees in England and Wales that last longer than 3 years and aren't the obvious ones but are still undergrad. Too many degrees to list but your basics are BSc, BA, MSc, MA, DPhil and Phd.

 

[phil_hg_uk]

Ah, but social life hasn't been included yet !!!! It's a mess of hours though.

As a self employed person can I say I have no idea what you are taking about, what is this social life you speak of

 

[marinyork]

[QUOTE 4280351, member: 9609"]is a graduate someone who has a degree ? and is going to a university the same thing[/QUOTE]

In actual fact, unbeknown to spokey I've read lots and lots of academic and other reports on this topic and this is the cafe so didn't want to get into that sort of discussion.

However what you ask on reports on graduate employment is a very good question.

There are many different definitions and datasets for this question and they have changed over time. University, degree, higher education, graduate aren't perfectly interchangeable words and mean slightly different things but in reports taken for convenience to sometimes mean near enough the same thing. So for example some reports might regard anyone having above level 3 as being in higher education and then this gets mixed in with the term graduate. Some datasets measure those who are a particular age say 18 or 17-30 who are entering university for the first time and then this may get mixed in for convenience alongside another dataset that talks about actual graduates. Different datasets come up with different numbers. This is a problem in discussing all levels as for GCSE/A-level there are 'equivalents'.

 

[marinyork]

Frowned upon by whom?
What's your job/industry?

Am I married? Do I have a baronetcy? Am I an eligible bachelor? Do I have a stipend?

I take that (just like a previous thread you answered to) as an incredibly hostile post. If you were interested in it you can quickly work that out or work out my last job in about 15 seconds.

And yes in my last job if anyone went along to an interview and said they had an 'honours' degree and they were thinking of doing a 'second' degree they would get mocked by most managers. I've heard the phrase 'we ALL have our qualifications, dear' said a number of times. On-line and in person I've heard a number of similar comments about retail.