It has been six months since I posed for pictures in cap and gown, proudly clasping my first class degree, my ticket to my future. "Grab your shades," I was told. "The future's bright."

But the light has dimmed. Aside from a temporary contract working for my university accommodation office, these past few months have not been kind. My optimism has faded into first cautious realism, to the last, desperate failings of hope, to this crushing despondency. Nobody wants me. I am not good enough.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. I, along with countless others, was promised the world. The route was clear: GCSEs, then A-Levels, then university. At this point, having paid the price in time and dedication as well as with actual money and accumulated debt, the world would be my oyster, and deservedly so. But the world has changed since 2006, when I first unpacked my belongings at the University of East Anglia, confident that a bright future was mine so long as I worked hard.

Eligible for only the smallest loan, based on the government's misguided assumption that my parents' income would supplement such funds, I was happy to work part time throughout my degree to support myself. As surprising as this may be to some who complain about the "student lifestyle", I did not resent this. I considered it natural and fair that I should be responsible for funding my own living costs, and was glad for the extra experience working part-time afforded me. As such, I worked a total of eight different jobs throughout my degree. Despite this, I am still burdened by overdrafts and credit card debt, on top of the four years of tuition and maintenance loans I must repay.

None of this would be a problem, had it paid off. I would not begrudge the money I owe if I felt it had been worth it. But these months of countless applications, rejections, fruitless interviews and misleading recruitment agencies amidst a backdrop of cuts and rising tuition fees has left me bitter.

I always wanted to be a writer, and up until as little as a year ago, I really thought I would be. Why not? I foolishly believed that a first class degree, alongside six years of varied work experience and boundless enthusiasm, would be more than enough to gain me access to the working world. This has proved to be far from the case.

My original goal widened as I approached graduation, blooming into a vague idea that I would find an entry-level position somewhere in the media or creative sector, and begin my career from there. After graduation, this ballooned ever further – I began looking for any job that would consider an arts and humanities graduate (this rules out a surprising number). Sometime after September, I abandoned any hope or aspiration of finding something I 'wanted' and began applying for any role for which I considered myself qualified. Okay, so it's not exactly my dream role, but at least I'll be employed, I thought.

By Christmas, I found myself still unemployed. Aside from a handful of days temping for various companies not interested in hiring anyone full-time, I felt near defeated. By that time, I'd had several interviews, and their reasons for rejecting me – if such a response came at all – were as varied as the roles themselves.

At one interview for a basic administrative job for a textiles production company, the interview raved at length about that fact that I was 'educated' and offered sympathy that I had to apply for 'jobs like this' (answers on a postcard as to how one is supposed to respond to this without seeming, at best, smug or insincere). All of this sounds great, of course, but the punchline is that I was not offered the role, on the basis that I was overqualified and would as such 'get bored and leave'. This was made even more frustrating when, in other interviews I attended, the interviewers were dubious and sceptical about my lack of experience. But how, after a four year degree and no gap year to speak of, am I supposed to have gained this illusive experience? Why is part-time work not enough? And, perhaps most importantly, why are posts advertised as 'entry-level' if they are, in fact, nothing of the sort?

It is no comfort at all that I am not alone in this. The lack of jobs for graduates is such a well-discussed issue that we have recently been dubbed the 'lost generation'. Considering this is a term once applied to the thousands of men who died at war, I do not think such a defeatist rhetoric is helping the problem. We are not lost. We are in the dole queues, in the recruitment agencies, in the interview rooms. Rejection does not make people lost: it makes them despair, and it will make them give up. The crucial fact is that we are not lost, yet. But we will be. How long does a graduate need to be unemployed before they simply give up? If we have no experience now, where do you think we will be after another year of little success, when we are joined by 400,000 new, frantic graduates?

There are solutions here. Firstly, stop calling us the 'lost generation' (maybe the 'disappointed generation' is more accurate), because it is not enough to simply lament the fact that there are so few jobs available for graduates. Maybe now is the time to consider how the private sector approaches prospective graduate employees, that is, with what seems to be little more than a dismissive once-over. If the government genuinely wants to avoid losing a talented generation to the dole queues, surely they should consider offering incentives to companies to employ them, perhaps in the form of a tax break, or similar?

The greatest irony of this whole problem is that employers are missing a trick in avoiding graduates. What they should realise is, after months of increasing desperation, such a graduate will be so thrilled and grateful to be employed that they will be an exemplary employee, determined to honour the chance they have been given with commitment and dedicated. Don't believe me? Give a grad a go. You'll see.

You can find Sara on Twitter: @saramegan