Welcome to the Weird and Wonderful World of Work

Well hello there… I’ll stop with the Ws now. I was going to see if I could write this whole post in alliteration, but I thought that was far too much faff. It’s been a month since I was a uni student. I had my summer, I swiftly got bored of having so much free time, and as of a week and a half ago, I am officially a full-time employee. Eek!

See, I’m not going to talk much about work. Not about what I do specifically or where I work or who I work with. Just that I am having the best time right now and even a week and a half in, I feel more comfortable than I have ever felt at work before.

What I do want to talk about is all the weird bits and bobs you don’t expect to feel about getting a job straight out of uni. I have been extremely fortunate that the job hunt was short. I’d landed this job before I even got my degree certificate. I’d barely applied for 20 jobs, and of those 20, this interview was my first and last. There are so many people that I know who are still battling the job market, losing their sanity behind applications. For many of my friends, they have already picked education back up so they have something to look forward to in September, or are settling in retail because it’s perfectly comfortable and they understandably don’t want the trauma of rejection yet.

I feel so guilty. I feel bad that I have been so lucky. It doesn’t matter to me right now how hard I worked, how proactive I had been, or how much I deserve this. Whoever I talk to, I just feel awful. I’ve had conversations with friends, checking in with them since we’ve all gone back to our own corners of the country, and I’m struggling between just talking about my goings-on and feeling like I’m rubbing my success in their faces.

It diminishes the pride of it a bit, the feeling like I have to be nonchalant as to not upset someone or come off too smug. I’d felt it at my previous job too, talking with a group of people who had also been looking to leave without any luck, my excitement practically screaming in their faces that I’m better than them. I’m not. I think I can put a lot of the success down to my passion for the craft. I suppose it’s hard to sell yourself in an interview when you don’t care much about what you’re selling yourself for… But really, what do I know?

It’s a weird one. I feel like I’m acting. In life, we are taught to act chirpy in social settings so as not to let anyone know you’re unhappy. Nobody prepares you for the reverse, where you have to dim your enthusiasm and act like nothing interesting has ever happened in your life to the people you talk to most, and then still put on that professional edge at work. I’m stuck in a weird middle where nobody truly knows how I am or what I’m up to besides my parents.

Speaking of big, complex feelings: the impostor syndrome has hit already. All of the intrusive thoughts telling me I am not as good as I think I am, that I can write but only for myself, that I am never going to learn and meet expectations. My mind is constantly overthinking every interaction as I tell myself I am not a likeable person and I will not succeed in the world of work. I’ve come into this job being split between having an extremely passive personality at work, where I am silent and do what I need to do and go home because that is what was expected of me, and being the know-it-all at uni, where I was the always-available point of contact for much of the student newspaper, where I helped and managed and took control. I haven’t quite figured out who I am yet, and I am horrified of falling into the passivity again.

There’s no reason for the impostor syndrome. I have been showered in reassurance since my first day. I have conversed with all of my coworkers and only come across as slightly socially inept, with an inability not to drip liquids down myself. The first-day coffee drama has chiselled its way into my long-term memory. Even if everyone I know forgets it, I don’t think I am going to allow myself to live it down. I’ll report back if I wake up in a cold sweat 10 years down the line… It was absolutely all Costa’s fault, though. Boycott, methinks.

I hope that the impostor syndrome will ease with time. I know everything is new and unfamiliar, and I will get the hang of things eventually. I am worried this feeling of guilt will never ease, though, not until everyone else is in a job they love, ready to take life as it comes and learning to be content in the unknown. Or maybe I just need to learn to be a bit more selfish and feel my feelings proudly.