When I was younger I seemed to spend a lot of lesson time drawing ‘life maps’.

They looked like snakes and ladders boards, but with no snakes or ladders, just square after square of meticulously planned life, travelling from A to B to C with not so much as a flicker of doubt as to the destination.

Of course, the destination did vary with every new year I made one – for a long while I was going to be a vet. This was modified to suit a fear of blood to ‘zoologist’, and again, to incorporate a seafaring side to ‘marine biologist’, and totally scrapped in Year 9 when I wanted to be a Moulin Rouge dancer.

But what never troubled me too much back in those ambitious days was how I’d get from one coloured square to the other. Obviously, in life map terms it was no bother – I’d just move the counter on one square, making it an incredible dull, yet straightforward exercise. And in real life it was almost that simple – you took your GCSEs so you could take your A-levels, you took your A-levels so you could get into university, you went to university so you could…hang on here!

If I’m standing on the edge of the square labelled ‘university’ then the next square appears to be labelled ‘wildly successful career’. There are no in-between squares – according to the life map, I have done all I can to be able to shuffle into the employment of my dreams in about nine months time.

And luckily for the up-to-date life map, I’ve already decided on my chosen career – after a couple of great work experience stints on various BBC newsdesks and some time on university radio, I think I’d rather like to head into the broadcast journalism line of work. Great, so I’ve settled on that, so it should just be a case of moving my counter into the Six o’clock newsroom, shouldn’t it?

Oh, life map, why do you keep fooling me with your Sesame Street approach to living? Because, far from being a quick hop over to another primary coloured chunk of life, there seems to be a massive ravine between me and employment that I just didn’t expect to have to deal with, at least not at this tender age.

And yet, apparently, the time has come for me to start taking meaningful steps – which has meant for the past few weeks I’ve been up to my neck in paperwork for various postgraduate courses and traineeships, the thought of which make me want to curl up and weep. And far from being able to waltz into anything, I’ve a feeling it will take just a little more graft than my youthful self could have imagined.

What, even with my nine and a half GCSEs? Half of my friends are the same, frantically looking around for inspiration, and the other half have already decided to quit while they’re ahead and let employment ‘come to them’. Either way, in the current economic climate, and with a degree that can ‘lead to just about anything’ (read ‘just about nothing’) we’re all pretty much up the ravine and in real need of something more like a life sat-nav.