Today 30 years ago, I’d packed up my relatively few possessions and was heading up the M6 to university, home condensed into a hatchback.
In truth, I’d been preparing to leave home since around the age of 6, when I first realised I was inspired by exploring the unknown, hungry for experiences and thrilling tongues you couldn’t buy in the local high street.
Aside from initial semester breaks, I never actually returned to my childhood home. My parents moved during my 3rd year in France, and then mirrored my brother and me by venturing abroad the summer I graduated.
Friends seemed to either head off travelling, gravitate to London in pursuit of graduate recruitment schemes or attempted to readapt to family life, taking on pub and call-centre jobs while they figured out next steps and paths they were genuinely drawn to.
I guess I didn’t quite do any of these.
A physical home in my hometown no longer existed. Christmas was Christmas with the nostalgia element taken out. It became about new rituals.
The summer I graduated, I had to pack for three different destinations. One lot for my parents. One for my contract in Hanover. And one for storage with friends in London for my return 5 months later with no parental home to gatecrash.
Without attending the graduation ceremony, I jumped on a plane for Germany and took up an entry-level public relations role at EXPO 2000.
Sure, it wasn’t going to be the dream role but I was working with people, part of something global and earning my way using the languages I’d spent 4 years polishing. There were new international friends and late-night parties that took preference over last trains. So, as a 22-year-old looking for adventure and independence, employed by the Foreign Office, I guess it was a pretty good start.
Just returning was the weird bit.
No family in town.
I didn’t have a phone. No address or contact details at all.
Just uncomfortably living off the kindness of others. A friend’s boyfriend had a space in his houseshare and let me pay on a weekly basis until I found work and a permanent living arrangement.
I bought a huge brick phone that ate up credit as quickly as I could purchase it. Everything could be found in a newspapers: jobs, flats, bicycles. So, I circled two multilingual recruitment agencies and simply turned up in person with my hard copy CV.
They called me 24 hours later with three interested clients, one assessment centre and an interview, and one week later, I was sat opposite the other simultaneously hired newbie in my second post-uni job.
How far this feels from the graduate process today and the job market as a whole: the feeling that you could “physically” walk through a door and into a role.
Honestly, I think it was harder to find a houseshare.
And as for home, well, in the words of Paul Young: “wherever I lay my hat”.
Here’s to the next 30 years of exploration!
