A Personal Narrative: Breaking Free from My Degree

"What do you want to be when you're older?"

That question has plagued me for most of my childhood and still plagued me up until recently. I always had two answers for this question. The first answer was 'publishing' which was not an uncommon answer for an English Literature student despite most of us not really understanding the profession and was just going off the basis of "I love books". The second answer which I had become accustomed to using was "I don't know". I attended university at 18 years old, fresh out of my A Levels and now at 21, I am done. My university career progression was extremely abnormal as it was always very apparent that university was never my first priority. I spent majority of this year which would have been my third year working part time at my retail job and doing a lot of soul searching. My mental health was at an all time low and I did absolutely nothing contributing to my degree. It wasn't until 3 weeks ago I finally said out loud "I am dropping out of university" did I realise I was trapping myself in a narrative I so desperately wanted to break free from.

So why did it take me this long to come to this conclusion? I think it was combination of the pandemic universally delaying all our lives and fear. All my life I was taught that after you finished school, you'd go to university, get a degree and then embark on your career journey. To me, the option to not attend university was never a part of the picture. However, this pressure didn't come from my parents. It came from society. It is so easy to buy into this idea that society now allows us different pathways to become successful and that the choice is purely ours to make but at 17 years old, I was not old enough to truly absorb what that meant.

I spent the past 4 years using university as a buffer for starting my career and hoped that along the way, I would finally know the answer to what I wanted to do with my life. Funnily enough, after one week of putting a lot of mental energy and actively trying to find job opportunities to start a career in, I am able to confidently answer that previously miserable question. Here's not to say the answer won't change but that is okay because I have barely entered my 20s and frankly the answer "I don't know" was always valid regardless.

I always knew growing up that I wanted a successful career. As an avid rom-com watcher, I had zero clue of what I wanted to do but I had this deep innate feeling I am one of the Andi Sachs (The Devil Wears Prada) and Andie Anderson's (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) of the world. So here I am ready to venture out into the world and start my career. Who knows where I'll end up. All I know is that this is only the beginning.

Until next time,

Nicole