MY STORY....
August 2018. It’s my 22nd birthday, me
and my mom are traveling from my hometown near Brum up to Lincoln, ready to
collect the keys to my new apartment. After a year of depression and
unemployment, I'm determined to start my 22nd year with a fresh start!
21 was a complicated
age for me: I left university with a first-class honours degree in Media
Production, the graduate award for Best Photography Student, and the excitement
of hunting for the career I had been working up to for the past five years! A
career that I never really wanted. I would go on to spend the rest of the
year unemployed, having my heart broken, being rejected for countless jobs and
feeling my sense of selfworth deteriorating.
After constant
rejections, one was the tipping point for me. Each job or internship rejection
prior to this had come with vague and unproductive reasons, and I had been
going round in circles with no clue how to break out of this cycle. But then I
applied for a media internship with a company I had previous volunteer experience
with. I was enthusiastic going in: I was the perfect fit! Volunteer experience
within the company, the degree and graduate award to match, and extra
curricular experience to back it up! But the reality was, the job wasn’t
right for me.
Unlike previous
rejections, this one came with an honest and considerate conversation about my
career development, where I currently was, where I was going, and a comment
that would change the trajectory of my career: “You know you're an artist
right?!”
All this time I had
been trying to suppress the artist that I was, but apparently she was blatantly
obvious to everyone around me! I needed to take a step back and look at what I
was going to do next. I can't just be an artist right? I’ve got a media
degree! Being an artist isn’t something that I ever considered as an option for
me. But I knew I was at my happiest when I was making art, and a this point in
my life, I really needed some happiness.
The truth is, being
an artist was all I had ever known, and all I ever wanted to be. I dropped Fine
Art during my A-level’s due to a mix of peer pressure from my ‘friends’, and a
lack of education regarding what a career in the arts can look like. But I knew
that when I was making art, the world made more sense to me, and I made more
sense to the world.
“I’m going to do a
masters in fine art… am I making a mistake?!” I remember saying to my best
friend.
“No, you're an
artist, it makes perfect sense” he replied
I’d spent so long
trying to pursue a career in the media, wanting a job that would allow me to be
“creative but corporate”, with the fantasy that working on my art as a hobby
would be enough for me. But it never would have been! The creative yet
corporate world that I was searching for was soul destroying, nothing aligned
with the ethics and worldviews that I held close to my heart, yet I deceived
myself into thinking I could temporarily put them aside for the sake of my
career.
I want to clarify here that putting
aside ethics and worldviews for a career is very different to doing the same
for a job, unfortunately most of us will need a job during uni to get us
through our degree, and it's not always easy to find one that aligns with your
worldviews (I’m a vegan that spent a few months working for a burger company!).
But when it comes to your career you should listen to your gut, and if it
doesn’t feel right, maybe its not the role for you!
The next few months
was a rollercoaster worthy of a coming of age drama. I moved back to Lincoln,
to start a subject at masters level that I had suppressed since my GCSE’s,
re-connected with past loves such as spoken word poetry, and put all my energy
into growing into a happier and healthier version of myself.
And honestly, halfway through the second year of my masters I have never been happier. I’ve just
completed an internship with the same company that started this journey. I had
spent the year leading up to this position solidifying my position as an
artist, exhibiting and performing at any opportunity, working on my confidence
and my health. Meaning this time I went into the role confidently knowing that I
am an artist, and I am willing to work hard for a career in the arts.
During my time
working at Frequency I saw the preconceived image I had of myself shifting. The
expectations that the team had for me were high, but so was their faith in me.
I am someone that suffers with anxiety and depression, but those aren't factors
that define me, and through this position my confidence and faith in myself
grew. Small tasks that would have previously triggered anxiety became an everyday expectation, and with this, the expectations that I held for myself grew.
In the space of a
year I’ve gone from someone who was in pursuit of a career she didn't want, in
denial about who she was and what she wanted to do; to being confident enough
to say that I am going to follow my dreams no matter how hard it is, I want to
put my happiness first.
I’ve learned so much
about myself over this past year, but if I can give any advice it is to follow
the path that is going to make you happiest (as cheesy as it sounds, follow
your heart!). If you’re in your final year of university, or have graduated,
and your degree no longer aligns with where you want to go, that's ok! You’ve
spent three or more years with that subject, and in that time you've probably
grown a lot as a person, so if that means your degree subject doesn’t fit who
are anymore, and isn’t pointing you in the direction that you want to go, it's
ok to change paths. Take the knowledge that you’ve learned along the way and
put it into your passion!
It's never too late
to change your mind!
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