The elusive career paths of humanities students: Does the ‘Oxford bubble’ breed employment anxiety? 

Strong-minded and academically driven undergraduates are certainly not something found lacking at the University of Oxford. The thousands who swarm the streets of this beautiful city of ‘dreaming spires’ bustle about the centre, emitting a hum of excited determination. What exactly these ‘buzzing’ students are determined to achieve can vary. For freshers, it might be making their time here rich with new experiences and people, or maybe it’s the aspiration to achieve a distinction in their Preliminary Examinations. However, for those of us approaching our final year, career-led ambitions have, to a certain degree, overtaken academic concerns at the forefront of our minds. 

Although the word ‘finals’ is enough to generate anxiety in even the most level-headed among us – a feeling my flatmate and I commonly refer to as ‘the pit’ – it is also the worry of what lies beyond these fated examinations that can daily plague both our conscious and subconscious minds. The pressure to know where our careers are headed is often amplified by our parents (or grandmothers, in my case!), some of whom might have a more definitive idea about where our degrees will take us. It is true that some come to Oxford with a clear picture of where they would like to be in ten years’ time; however, amid the masses of budding professionals, there are those of us who feel lost regarding what we truly desire to do with the rest of our lives. If you share similar anxieties, it is not inconceivable to perceive yourself ‘falling behind’ in an imagined race set along a preordained linear trajectory. 

Surrounded by peers who have already secured placements or appear to know exactly the career path they are about to embark on, it is easy to develop a sense that you are running out of time. This is only amplified by the frequent stories of the dire state of the graduate job market, passed through the grapevine of the recently (and not-so-recently) graduated. We undergraduates often hear horror stories about how long it can take after graduating to find a company willing to interview you, let alone hire you, despite potentially having received a first-class degree from one of the finest universities across the globe. Unfortunately, there does not seem to exist an easily deducible ‘correct’ path one ought to take; one that might prove all the time spent studying intensely, coming home early from a night out to cram, and the sleepless nights spent completing essays has been worthwhile. 

I believe a feeling many undergraduates here will resonate with is academic perfectionism that is almost never satiated, at least in the long term. After achieving one goal, the next takes over, and the drive to succeed and prove oneself can become overwhelming, without one really being aware of what it is that matters so greatly about being ‘the best’. It is this compulsion that has troubled me recently. While I am not sure I would go as far as to say that Oxford breeds specific expectations of ‘right’ career progressions for its graduating students, I would be lying if I claimed I didn’t believe a competitive environment such as this can encourage the feeling commonly labelled ‘impostor syndrome’, convincing you that there are such expectations to which one must live up in order to ‘fit in’.

Furthermore, this unsettling feeling can pose an issue for humanities students such as myself. Many humanities degrees do not lead directly into a specific professional field. As someone who studies Theology and Religion, I have often been asked if I intend to pursue a career in the Church but, as an atheist, this path is not one I have been especially tempted by, or would be particularly appropriate for me. The response that follows this answer is usually a variation of: “Well, what else can you do with your degree?” The answer, luckily (or unluckily – depending on how you look at it), for me is “quite a lot actually”. But this also poses a significant problem. Without my degree leading me to a specific career, my choices are rather expansive, which can be quite daunting if you, like myself, chose your subject out of passion, rather than practical use. Thus, the seemingly ‘elusive’ career path of humanities students is one that can provoke an ever-resurfacing anxiety when it becomes the topic of conversation. 

Now, as I enter my final year, I am still none the wiser regarding my career aspirations beyond those which most primary school children could identify: reasonably high-paying, relatively enjoyable, and somewhat related to my degree. These criteria would then, hopefully, make my degree, and the approximately £60,000 worth of debt I will have accumulated in my studies, worthwhile (though most ten-year-olds might not include the latter). Perhaps this seems juvenile and obvious, and it is certainly not at all helpful in narrowing down what I want to do. Nevertheless, in writing this, I am aware that, when one doesn’t know exactly where to begin in the search for job prospects, this is not necessarily the worst place to start! After all, in a pool of fresh graduates eager to find employment, I would wager that being open to anything while I find my feet is no bad thing. 

I have been working on the assumption that the path I need to take to achieve my ‘dream’ career (whatever that might be) is linear and flat – something that any path towards something worth having rarely is. If my slightly vague, short-term and more generic aspirations have gotten me this far, then I am sure that, in time, they will get me to where I eventually decide I want to be. 

I have spent the last year preaching that finally letting go of internal pressure to ‘be the best’ is what actually got me to where I am now, rather than overloading myself with the expectation that I need to meet a certain goal in order to make my degree ‘worthwhile’. It is perhaps time I began to heed my own advice: to let myself enjoy my final year here for the wonderful experience it is, and realise that I have the privilege of time to discover what I would like to pursue a career in, and change my mind again, and again, before I get it right.