Broken Dreams

In 2011, a cohort of 16-21 year olds were asked what their dream job would be. Six years later, only 1 in 50 of them were in it.

I was 16 years old in 2011. At that age, my careers' advice amounted to: go to university, study what you want, you'll be fine.

That was more or less it.

Curiously enough, it was around that year of my life that I was starting to consider certain practicalities. I knew we had endured three years of recession and austerity was starting to bite. I had been interested in classics, archaeology and Celtic studies for several years, but those weren't the only things I cared about. I was having second thoughts about studying them and directing myself to become an academic; I liked the subjects, but I wasn't sure I was that committed. I wanted to do something more tangibly real, more clearly connected with the pressing concerns of the day. I mentioned to several people that perhaps I ought to do geography instead.

Nobody engaged. It was as though the teachers I spoke to could not comprehend this level of pragmatism -  as if it was totally irrelevant. Everyone just told me - do what you love.

From an early age, I was taught to follow my dreams. This irresponsible, hubristic advice followed me through school and university and I never once worked out what was actually possible in the real world.

Trying to get a grown-up job, whether after finishing school or finishing university, is a brutal awakening for my generation. We were raised to believe it was easy. It is not. In fact there are nowhere near enough interesting - never mind fulfilling - jobs to go around.

This should have been obvious. Someone should have told us before.

But no one could bear to tell their children that they had brought them forth into a world with far less opportunity than the one before. Because they could not bear to admit it to themselves.

Between 1990 and 2007, the UK economy almost tripled in size from $1 to $2.8tn.

By 2018, it still has not climbed over $3tn.

The result was that I was raised by a generation who barely remembered the economic hardships of the 70s, dimly blamed Thatcher for the 80s - and believed all that firmly belonged to the past. They took property-ownership for granted and stumbled into prosperity by accident.

It was a kind of hubris: it was the myth of progress. In the West, we have generally believed that humanity moves ever forwards through time and on to better things: the future is morally superior - and it is flush with cash.

The whimsical, short-sighted, hippie careers advice my generation received is entirely a product of this complacent way of thinking. Our expectations - the aspirations we were told were perfectly realistic - the disgusting lie that you can be anything you want to be if you put your mind to it... we found our beliefs about what we could do and be in our lives in stark opposition to reality.

We are a generation raised to believe we would all be princes, only to find, at the last minute, that only a tiny fraction will ever have the life we thought nearly all of us would; the rest of us are to be slaves, or starve.

Then they wonder why we are all so depressed and anxious. The level of support for Jeremy Corbyn among my generation may be considered another widespread mental health condition brought on by this crisis - of abject disappointment, despair and humiliation.