Since graduating, I have spun around in the world of recent graduate life as violently as I could have, frantically flitting from one career area to the next trying to find my ‘passion.’
I graduated from the University of Kent with a degree in Applied Psychology less than a year ago and had no clear plan of what to do career-wise. The past year has seen me register with a teaching training agency, interview with what feels like a hundred recruitment companies, spend five months working for M&S, and three months as a teaching assistant, before finally starting at BlueSky PR.
Working in an office and reading the Financial Times was not where I pictured myself at all at the start of university. When I first started my degree back in 2014 I had convinced myself that I was going to train as a clinical psychologist, but whilst I enjoyed the programme I quickly realised that this path was not for me. I reserved myself to simply performing as well as I possibly could in my degree hoping that a career path would magically reveal itself to me.
It did not.
By the end of my degree I decided to try teaching, however after only a month working as a teaching assistant I discovered that the life of a teacher was definitely not for me either.
Rather than being wasted time, these little career tasters allowed me to think about what I wanted out of a career. I wanted a job that would allow me to be creative, without having to take lesson plans home or corral a class of 30 10-year olds. I also wanted a role that was interesting and varied.
Thinking back to my degree, the parts I enjoyed most always involved writing, and reading and working with research, aspects that are heavily featured in PR. I began to look into PR roles in more detail as I knew this was a profession that could be incredibly varied while fostering my love for writing. Working in PR also involves keeping up with the news and media landscape, having good communication skills, and maintaining client relationships.
When I found the role with BlueSky I realised that this was exactly what I was looking for. I have only just started, but I am excited to see how my interests in this area will be further developed and how much more I can learn from a team who seem genuinely enthusiastic about what they do.
