LAST week saw two days of post-grad graduations from the University of York. Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen of the Class of 2018. You made it.

If I had some advice to give to you, and indeed to those undergraduates at all of York’s higher education institutions who will be donning their gowns at graduation ceremonies later in the year, it would be this...

Don’t wear sunscreen. Just buy a wide-brimmed hat instead. Sunscreen bottles are generally made of plastic, and you know where plastic ends up?

Albatrosses.

Avoid triggering a tweetstorm of righteous indignation by ensuring your wide-brimmed hat isn’t a culture-appropriating sombrero.

Floss. Read up on the effectiveness of flossing and find it generally has very few proven benefits in terms of cavity prevention.

Stop flossing. Understand that this piece is a spoof of a thing that may have come out before you were born and oh God that’s scary.

Watch the film ‘Into the Wild’, it’s great. Wonder what happened to Emile Hirsch. He hasn’t been in anything in a while. Decide you’ll Google him later.

Dance.

Live in the city once, but leave before you start wearing a monocle.

Live in the countryside once, but leave before you start reading ghost stories to trees.

Listen to John Lennon’s solo work and realise he was easily the best Beatle, even if you do like that George Harrison song ‘Run of the Mill’ you heard at Emily’s house party that time. Emily had a gorgeous house. Nice high ceilings, plenty of natural light. Think about moving to that part of town. Have a casual look at rental prices out there. Feel suddenly hopeless.

Focus.

Learn that possessions are merely fleeting and ultimately unimportant next to the purity of experience, but also get a Nintendo Switch, just because.

Remember that even good people sometimes leave the TV on standby and forget to sort the recycling.

When you feel yourself getting outraged by something you just read online, switch it off and go for a walk.

Online discourse is like a photo-negative of a real discussion. Hard as it is, be grateful for the right to free speech which lets people air opinions that are clearly just plain wrong.

Give Emily back the vegetable peeler you stole from her perfect house. What kind of person steals a vegetable peeler?

Do one thing every day that scares you. Like convincing yourself that your own hands are possessed by the spirit of a dead serial killer and they’re plotting against you. Look at your hands now. What are they thinking?

Oh, and just one more thing.

Leave this sorry country and don’t come back.

Early signs indicate that a recession is crawling inexorably towards us like a legless ghoul.

Maybe it will be this year, maybe it won’t. Maybe it will be next year, maybe it won’t.

But whenever it comes, know that graduating into a recession is like jumping into a swimming pool and realising, too late, that it’s been emptied of all the water.

Take it from someone whose cohort graduated into the absolute dumpster fire that was the jobs market a decade ago. Thousands of graduates clamoured for each barista vacancy, and still bear the scars.

You won’t ever be able to afford a house here and any job you manage to get will soon be stolen by a robot.

The older generation are pulling up the ladders.

Leave.

Learn another language.

Go and see a whale before we harpoon them all.

Go and see a tiger before we skin them all.

Go and see an albatross before they all choke on discarded sunscreen bottles.

Climb mountains if you’re able. Learn to sail. Cycle. Run.

But trust me on ‘Into the Wild’. It’s well directed with solid performances.