Youth unemployment is at an all-time high and the young of today – including me – are starting to reassess the meaning of this term “career”.

It has become a strange animal for anyone aged 24 and under, as it sits staring at us, smugly. When adults ask us, as children: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” the emphasis is on the “be” – what path will shape your identity as your limbs develop and you start to wear stiff clothes.

But self-identity is a touchy subject for today’s graduates, who are likely to be on the dole, scrounging off their parents and feeling worthless for doing so: broken pride, diminishing self-worth and financial despair bottled up in their old bedroom back at home. We are tempted to knock back beakers of Talisker at the thought of the cheques to be made payable to the ever-present student loan company.