I've shied away from revealing blog posts in the past, and I've also been known to write too much about myself. I'm bound to look back on this post and think 'what was I thinking?' but at this moment in time, it seems right to write a small part of this down for the entire world to see… That, in itself, makes no sense, but hey…
We all know how much I hate uni, yes? Yes. Why I chose Events Management is beyond me. I did have ambitions to literally run Eurovision. I told myself that I'd always be involved in it in some way or other, even if it was just as a volunteer. I did get close to it this year, and hopefully they will run a similar scheme this year in Sweden, since I find it easier to speak Swedish than German. Anyway, off topic. I picked Events Management in an attempt to get closer to being involved in Eurovision. Fat lot of nothing that's done so far.
Since the very beginning of uni, I've felt as though I've had loads of time to figure out what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go, and each day seems to race by, and look where I am now. I'm just about to start third year, and decide on my dissertation topic. My dissertation. I'm 21 in October, and the following May I will have whizzed through a university degree and ready to start life, right? Wrong. Uni has passed me by in a whirlwind, and all that time during first year thinking I had the rest of my life to sit and think about my future never really existed. I'm more thancertain hopeful that third year of uni will come with a careers advice session to help break into the world of graduate employment, but I'm doubtful. So next May I am thrown out onto the street expected to find a job in Events Management with my wide University-level knowledge of this vast world, when all uni has ever taught me is that I do not want to be involved in events. They are a lot of work for not a lot of reward and after the few I've been involved with myself (not through the technical production side of things) it's been stressful as hell and I vowed in my sore high heels and tatted hair as I handed winners envelopes to speakers that I would never get into organising events. So what does that leave me?
I know a degree is also a sign of aptitude, and the fact that I do actually have the patience to remain in education for a further three years to receive my BA (Hons) (maybe) and that my mind works in such a way that means I can turn it to a multitude of 'challenging' tasks that require someone of a University standard to complete. What am I even talking about? I hate people who say things like that, and I have learned nothing from my lectures. Degrees mean nothing anymore, everyone knows that, and a degree in Events Management? It's a big fat two fingers up to degrees the world over.
So, my problem is, without knowing exactly what I want to do when I grow up, what am I going to do in a years time? This used to be such a distant question that never really required much attention because it was years off, and whilst it still is a year off, I've proved to myself that a year really isn't a very long period of time. That question 'what do you want to be?' is such a daunting question for me, because I really have no idea. After thinking about it for a little while, it eats away at you and you think to yourself, who even am I? Who do I want to be, and what do I want to do with my life? It's degrading, because I genuinely do not have answers to these kinds of questions, and if I don't even know who I am myself, then how can I fulfil ambitions and dreams when I don't even know what they are? And to use my degree knowledge to get them? I'm fighting a losing battle with that one.
This then means that I have a different struggle. I'm keen on trying something completely unrelated to Events Management, but not necessarily on a degree level. Should I wish to take up a seasonal type job or even just a job with minimal entry grades (but not McDonalds before we jump to conclusions), am I overqualified to work there? Do I therefore not declare my degree and disregard the last 3 years, lying on my CV? I just want to see what I'd like to do, whatever that is. What if I find out that what I really want to do requires a degree to even get there, do I go back to uni and spend my own money getting there, because I didn't know it was even a vocation when I was 17?
All in all, I'm conflicted, and to have to explain this to a university careers advisor doesn't seem as though it would go down too well. If only they had been a better university…
The last 2 years I've worked with R&B Group, and if you don't know that, where've you been? I'm a 'presentation graphic designer' for a corporate event production services company and do really enjoy it. It's a canny industry that likes to think it's a little bit rock & roll, but it's not, and the people are very nice people to work with, and I get on with lots of them, including the ones you see once or twice a year. But I'm not technical. I do not have a technical, number-based mind that can programme desks and do all these technical things, lifting big boxes everywhere. I like it a lot and will be extremely sad to leave, but I just can't stay there forever, the type of person I am and the particular set of skills I have, or do not have. But, working here means I've not worked in customer services or retail like many people, and I have always wanted to. Not for very long, but I'd like to give it a go. I'd be the worst employee haha. I'd like a job, but only for a few months, then I'm leaving.
I'm so heavily influenced by recent activities, so if I go to Sweden, all I want to do is work in Sweden, or with Swedish. If I go to Melodifestivalen, or Eurovision, all I want to do is work for those guys. I've been to Alton Towers twice this year so far, and now all I want to do is work with / for Alton Towers. It must be so easy for people who know that they definitely want to be teachers, or policemen, or dentists, because there is that focus. I just have no focus whatsoever, and will gladly be lead up and down the garden path all day long. I'm not naive like the saying suggests, but fairly easily influenced, and to want to work across several industries is just impossible, and most of the time unfounded.
So what do I do? For now I'm going to carry on wallowing until I figure out what I want in life, and once I do, hopefully it'll stick and I can maybe get a proper job and when people ask what I want to be, I can tell them I already am that. We're a few years off that yet though…
There's then a part of me that wants to buy fields and woodland and ride horses all day, and this is the part of me that says 'you need to get yourself a decent job because that £30,000 field isn't going to pay for itself'. I am fully aware that my problem is not a problem because 'plenty of adults still don't know what they want to do', but it is a problem, because despite saying all of that about my degree and my uni, I did not get myself into the cost of a field's worth of debt so I can sit behind a Poundland checkout all day. That degree is going to pay for itself somehow, I'm just not sure my current plans will allow that… because although I think a lot of jobs would be 'cool', they're not ambitions or aspirations. I do not aspire to work at Alton Towers, but can't deny it would be 'cool'. And thus, we have found the 'problem'. Without long-term career aspirations to be at the very top, these smaller 'cool' sounding jobs take that place, and they're not viable. But, as I've seem to be saying all day, you're not getting out of life alive, so live when you can. Do whatever the hell you want and it's your very own life, and everyone with an opinion is wasting theirs condescending yours. Are they worth listening to? No. Listen to yourself.
This got deep. Bye.
Jordanavia :)
We all know how much I hate uni, yes? Yes. Why I chose Events Management is beyond me. I did have ambitions to literally run Eurovision. I told myself that I'd always be involved in it in some way or other, even if it was just as a volunteer. I did get close to it this year, and hopefully they will run a similar scheme this year in Sweden, since I find it easier to speak Swedish than German. Anyway, off topic. I picked Events Management in an attempt to get closer to being involved in Eurovision. Fat lot of nothing that's done so far.
Since the very beginning of uni, I've felt as though I've had loads of time to figure out what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go, and each day seems to race by, and look where I am now. I'm just about to start third year, and decide on my dissertation topic. My dissertation. I'm 21 in October, and the following May I will have whizzed through a university degree and ready to start life, right? Wrong. Uni has passed me by in a whirlwind, and all that time during first year thinking I had the rest of my life to sit and think about my future never really existed. I'm more than
I know a degree is also a sign of aptitude, and the fact that I do actually have the patience to remain in education for a further three years to receive my BA (
So, my problem is, without knowing exactly what I want to do when I grow up, what am I going to do in a years time? This used to be such a distant question that never really required much attention because it was years off, and whilst it still is a year off, I've proved to myself that a year really isn't a very long period of time. That question 'what do you want to be?' is such a daunting question for me, because I really have no idea. After thinking about it for a little while, it eats away at you and you think to yourself, who even am I? Who do I want to be, and what do I want to do with my life? It's degrading, because I genuinely do not have answers to these kinds of questions, and if I don't even know who I am myself, then how can I fulfil ambitions and dreams when I don't even know what they are? And to use my degree knowledge to get them? I'm fighting a losing battle with that one.
This then means that I have a different struggle. I'm keen on trying something completely unrelated to Events Management, but not necessarily on a degree level. Should I wish to take up a seasonal type job or even just a job with minimal entry grades (but not McDonalds before we jump to conclusions), am I overqualified to work there? Do I therefore not declare my degree and disregard the last 3 years, lying on my CV? I just want to see what I'd like to do, whatever that is. What if I find out that what I really want to do requires a degree to even get there, do I go back to uni and spend my own money getting there, because I didn't know it was even a vocation when I was 17?
All in all, I'm conflicted, and to have to explain this to a university careers advisor doesn't seem as though it would go down too well. If only they had been a better university…
The last 2 years I've worked with R&B Group, and if you don't know that, where've you been? I'm a 'presentation graphic designer' for a corporate event production services company and do really enjoy it. It's a canny industry that likes to think it's a little bit rock & roll, but it's not, and the people are very nice people to work with, and I get on with lots of them, including the ones you see once or twice a year. But I'm not technical. I do not have a technical, number-based mind that can programme desks and do all these technical things, lifting big boxes everywhere. I like it a lot and will be extremely sad to leave, but I just can't stay there forever, the type of person I am and the particular set of skills I have, or do not have. But, working here means I've not worked in customer services or retail like many people, and I have always wanted to. Not for very long, but I'd like to give it a go. I'd be the worst employee haha. I'd like a job, but only for a few months, then I'm leaving.
I'm so heavily influenced by recent activities, so if I go to Sweden, all I want to do is work in Sweden, or with Swedish. If I go to Melodifestivalen, or Eurovision, all I want to do is work for those guys. I've been to Alton Towers twice this year so far, and now all I want to do is work with / for Alton Towers. It must be so easy for people who know that they definitely want to be teachers, or policemen, or dentists, because there is that focus. I just have no focus whatsoever, and will gladly be lead up and down the garden path all day long. I'm not naive like the saying suggests, but fairly easily influenced, and to want to work across several industries is just impossible, and most of the time unfounded.
So what do I do? For now I'm going to carry on wallowing until I figure out what I want in life, and once I do, hopefully it'll stick and I can maybe get a proper job and when people ask what I want to be, I can tell them I already am that. We're a few years off that yet though…
There's then a part of me that wants to buy fields and woodland and ride horses all day, and this is the part of me that says 'you need to get yourself a decent job because that £30,000 field isn't going to pay for itself'. I am fully aware that my problem is not a problem because 'plenty of adults still don't know what they want to do', but it is a problem, because despite saying all of that about my degree and my uni, I did not get myself into the cost of a field's worth of debt so I can sit behind a Poundland checkout all day. That degree is going to pay for itself somehow, I'm just not sure my current plans will allow that… because although I think a lot of jobs would be 'cool', they're not ambitions or aspirations. I do not aspire to work at Alton Towers, but can't deny it would be 'cool'. And thus, we have found the 'problem'. Without long-term career aspirations to be at the very top, these smaller 'cool' sounding jobs take that place, and they're not viable. But, as I've seem to be saying all day, you're not getting out of life alive, so live when you can. Do whatever the hell you want and it's your very own life, and everyone with an opinion is wasting theirs condescending yours. Are they worth listening to? No. Listen to yourself.
This got deep. Bye.
Jordanavia :)
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