Navigating Life - University and Big Girl Jobs?

 

Hi Friends and welcome to another little blog post where I'm going to offload everything about my life on to you! In 2022 I learned so much about every aspect of myself and my life and I feel like I have so much to say especially when it comes to university and jobs and talking to Eduarda about life over pancakes today really made me think that this would be something good to write about on my blog. 

I feel like university and careers is something I could spend hours talking about to people but not in a boring careers advisor way (I hope that's how I don't come across anyways) but just that I have so much to say when I think about my university journey, jobs i've been in and why I decided to go back and study a masters in something that was completely different to my undergrad. 

I have always said that in school I felt there was so much pressure that you follow the one specific path of, doing GCSE's, doing A-Levels, getting into university and getting a job and that was just the path that everyone had to take to be successful. It is so daunting making those decisions at 17/18 years old.

When I was applying for university I felt like I had to move away to get the university experience and applied to go to the University of Liverpool to study Law, paid a deposit on accommodation and had told my mummy my plans (being an only child, safe to say I think she was pretty unsure about me going). As it was getting closer to the end of the year I realised I was nowhere near ready to move away from home, to a different country at that. Long story short, I realised Liverpool was not what I wanted and on results day I didn't get accepted into Queens (Honestly I felt like my life was ending) but, I got into Magee to study Law through clearing and I genuinely can't be more thankful for the way that things worked out. I don't think I was too immature or not independent enough at 18 but I definitely don't think I was ready to move away at that age. A lot of people might read that and think that they couldn't have imagined living at home during university whilst all of their friends were in the big cities, going on nights out 3/4/5 days a week but I don't feel like I missed out on the 'typical' university lifestyle either, just maybe done it in moderation I suppose? Also half of my uni degree was during Covid so I realistically didn't miss out on anything more than what everyone else did.

Moving on to completing my Law degree I genuinely felt so lost. A lot of my friends from my course wanted to be Solicitors or Barristers so were going on to get training contracts (A lot of them have qualified this year which is so nice to see!) but I genuinely didn't have a clue. I had this weird thought in my head that if I didn't get a job to do with my degree, after completing my degree, that it would be a failure in some sort of way? I definitely do not think that now. I wouldn't change my graduate job as i learned so much and I loved the work I done but I think I realised that the environment that I was in, I didn't thrive in which there is nothing wrong with! 

I started thinking of my other interests, other options I had and decided I wanted to study marketing but of course I had loads of stupid negative thoughts that people might think I was silly leaving a great job to go back to university to study something completely different and that this would be seen as a failure in some sort of way? Again, I was so wrong and quickly realised that going back to study doesn't take anything away from my undergrad that I worked so hard for or the experience that I had in my first 'big girl job'. Leaving my big girl job and doing another degree was anything far from failure and would literally give me so many more opportunities? It's so easy to doubt if the decision you're making is the right one but realistically if it's going to make you happier, of course it's the right decision?

I feel like I needed to offload my personal journey to get to the point of this blog. When speaking to Eduarda today we kept talking about how we are SO young. We are only 23 and we have so much time. I felt throughout my university and 'big girl' corporate job journey I was so lost and I just kept going on the path that I thought I was expected to go on. I always had the fear that if I don't do this people might think i've failed or not done it right but realistically no one actually cares and your friends and family just want you to be happy! Long story short, everyone around you is just as clueless as you are. Like I said in my last blog post, this is everyones first time 'doing life' as well, it's so fine to not have everything figured out or just to take some time to figure out what it is you want to do.

I feel like the main point of this blog post and something that I always do find myself thinking about is that there is so much time to figure things out and you don't need to follow what the typical path looks like! It's ok to have set backs, it's ok to change your mind and it's ok to not have an actual clue about what you're doing because talking to my friends made me realise that none of us actually know and everyone around you is just winging it too. Never worry about what the right decision is based on what other people might think, honestly if it makes you happy and it is going to benefit you then who cares what others think.

I hope you enjoyed my absolute ramble about life - It's really not that deep! Thanks for reading! 

Emily x