High achieving girls from Surrey, go on to get a degree from a Russell Group University.
That was the narrative which, until a year ago, I would have followed without question, the only slight variation potentially being a gap year in between the end of one education and the beginning of another.
So, I left for Exeter University in September 2018, ignoring the incredible anxiety I felt at the thought of going.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I dropped out after half a term, abandoning any sense of the traditional and conventional, to follow my own bizarre and exhilarating pathway.
Answering the question: “why exactly didn’t you like it?” is difficult; it would be so easy to tell people that I left University because I didn’t feel passionate about my course which was, in part, true.
I didn’t feel at all motivated, to get a degree, to even get through the day. It just wasn’t an environment that was suited to me and it’s more than ok to acknowledge when something isn’t right for you.
We are currently facing a mental health crisis, which I believe is partially due to two reasons. Firstly the idea that everyone else is constantly living ‘their best life’: the fear that you are not as happy or beautiful as everyone else, stimulated via curated feeds on social media. Hence the importance of remembering that what you see of others, is what they actively choose to share online.
Secondly, there is the worry that no matter what you do, you are never doing enough.
We are living in what I can only describe as a sort of “productivity culture” where we face inordinate and horrific pressure to thrive and succeed at the youngest possible age.
Growing up is hard enough already, but the pressure to be outwardly ‘successful’ adds a whole new burden.
Everyone goes on their own wildly unique journeys, post-education. It’s a pivotal time; I for one, feel as though I am a wholly different person now than I was a year ago. The thing you realise is that each journey is incomparable – you are living your own self-dictated life, perhaps for what feels like the first time. And there is no right or wrong way to live this. I was wonderful without my achievements and am still wonderful with them.
When I left university, I had no idea that I was about to enter a strange ‘limbo world’. A world where I was not a student but neither was I an adult, with a full-time 9 to 5 job. I began simply by washing up pots and pans, getting shifts at cafés and eventually, a job in retail - during which I accidentally set off the fire alarm in an incident I’d rather not recall!
I went on to do a brief stint in a social media and digital marketing position, work experience at ITV, improv and sketch-writing, wrote a play which toured Surrey and Sussex, teamed up with HeadTalks to produce a video about embracing the unconventional, started a blog, won a place on ‘The Network’ – a TV initiative at the Edinburgh TV Festival, had a billion assessment days, interviews and trials – some accidental (yes, really) some successful, some not so much. And everything I have done has been part and parcel of broader life experience.
When asked to best describe what I do now, honestly the only word that really summarises it, is unconventional.
From working as an Elf at Christmas time to giving talks at secondary schools about alternative routes post-secondary school education, I like to see my life as a smorgasbord of creativity and new challenges.
Yet, the most exciting thing that has happened, a testament to both my hard work and the privilege I’ve had which has allowed me to take the time to write, is an audio commission from BBC Arts.
In short, I applied for a scheme called “New Creatives” way back when, with nothing else but an idea, and not a very good one at that, to my name. Needless to say, I was rejected but given feedback to try again, and try to actually write a script this time.
I did, and it went through several rewrites until eventually it was commissioned! It means that the BBC fund me and provide a producer to help create an audio piece for one of their platforms. My piece is entitled ‘The Making of an Education’, and those five words couldn’t more aptly convey my life motto: education does not need to be contained in the walls of a lecture hall or classroom.
