The final frontier

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So you are in your final year. The pressure is on to do well in exams and those all-important dissertations. But how are you supposed to find the time to fit in job-hunting and do extra-curricular activities? We track the progress of one finalist to find out.

As you can imagine, the final year of university is not something to relish; the onset of exams are the last chance to achieve a reasonable degree.

You feel you owe it to your course advisers to start showing up regularly in lecture theatres and on top of all that you suddenly begin to look beyond university and start panicking about what the future holds.

The week before I began the new term I didn't really have time to think about what the year would entail or how stressful it would be. I was too focused on finishing my dissertation on Wilde; I had the entire summer to discuss the sexuality and violence in his works and yet, seven days before its deadline, Salome was sitting gathering dust on my bookshelf. As I proudly tell my tutors, I work best under pressure (and apparently without much sleep) and it seems there are a whole bunch of us students that prefer the nocturnal worth ethic of leaving everything until the very last minute.

What was needed after the hermetic week of essay writing was an inexpensive beverage in the student union bar. A couple of months away from my fellow university friends left me with a surprising sense of loss and nostalgia and so it was that the bar seemed the perfect place to catch up over a spirit or two and exchange holiday stories whilst also satisfying the curiosity of meeting the new freshers.

So began my stressful initiation into the final year. I mistakenly thought that most summers had been like mine (festivals, short temping jobs, time lost lying in the garden, countless BBQs). However, my IT savvy friend Ben had just finished a paid placement with an investment bank. He is now out of his overdraft and has companies falling over each other to offer him a position post degree. Neil had travelled to India as part of an NGO and had volunteered to help build schools and libraries. Even Hannah, my lazy partner in crime, had managed unpaid work experience with her local newspaper. The only additions I have made to my CV are how to cope with all weather conditions (dealing with the mud and rain at Glastonbury was quite an achievement) and having a thorough overview of the media, from daily newspapers to glossy magazines such as Hello! (I have quite a formidable knowledge about the new Kate Moss range in TopShop...) Suddenly I've become uneasy about the amount I will have to fit into this year besides academic work to thicken out my credentials. Next stop the careers service.

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