New here? Don't forget you can buy the book at Amazon. Thanks - Tanya x

Whoever said ‘The camera never lies’ had clearly never seen my graduation photo. Beaming into the July sunshine, modelling a faux furtrimmed gown and clutching a fake plastic degree (the real thing arrived weeks later), I’m doing a pretty convincing impression of someone who’s got it all worked out. But I so haven’t. Behind my smile lurks a guilty secret. In three years studying Psychology at Durham University, where I attended a measly six hours of lectures a week, I had done absolutely nothing about my career. Nada. Zip. Zero.

Need proof? Some stats from the day I graduated:

Visits to the university careers service: 0
Careers brochures collected: 0
Careers presentations attended: 0
Potential careers being considered: 0
Jobs applied for: 0
People who thought I would ever write a book about careers: 0

I had no idea that things were about to get much, much worse. Nobody warned me that within a couple of weeks of living back at home, my confi dence would evaporate and my self-esteem would nose-dive. No one told me I would spend the summer working as a very grumpy ‘Office Angel’, or that when autumn arrived I would still be no closer to knowing what I wanted to do with my life.

Dude, where’s my career? The guide for baffled graduates is the book I needed then.

******

When she’s not being a graduate jobs guru, Tanya de Grunwald is a features writer for the Guardian, the Independent, GLAMOUR, Grazia, Cosmopolitan and thelondonpaper. She is 30 and lives in West London.

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