My calculator, a Tipp-exed and sharpie-covered relic from my GCSE days, was the object that defined my holidays. Two years older and a surrogate brother of sorts, he has always been annoyingly smart. He breezed through his time at Oxford, doing very little work, and graduated last year with both a blue and a first. He then immediately landed a job in finance where he is getting paid more than my parents.
What can one even do with a degree in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History? I went home with a mission to find my future career over the Christmas break. Glued to my laptop, I laboured over my CV, scrolled through endless websites, and wracked my brain for any contacts I could call. My philosophy was to apply for anything and everything and hope the gods of the corporate world would point their fingers and choose me, taking over the task of deciding my life trajectory.
The first two marketing internships I found were for American Express and Barclays. Well, if my wannabe finance-bro ex-boyfriend thought that was true, I might as well give the banks a shot. Filled with the faint glimmer of satisfaction at becoming a woman in finance, to the utter shock and disbelief of all my friends and family, I started on the application forms. What I did not read in the fine print was that they required me to sit an assessment. I got through A Levels and university admissions just fine.
However, upon opening the practice paper, I was filled with utter dread, the kind which I had not felt since I was fifteen. I had not touched any numbers since I took my maths GCSE early , with the assistance of three tutors simultaneously.
I found my calculator stuffed in the bottom of a box of old schoolwork, joyously discarded with the genuine belief that I would never have to use it again. After working my way through the questions, I discovered, to my horror, that my highest mark was achieved by randomly selecting the multiple-choice answers. I felt utterly helpless.
