First off, I just want to formally apologise to everyone for the lack of blog post last week. To be completely honest with myself, I wasn’t expecting to receive as many questions about the missing blog as I did. I sometimes find it hard to believe that people have any interest in my life, but to everyone who surprisingly does, I apologise.
The last week of my life has been amazing, but hectic, and I’ve had little time for writing – or doing anything remotely related to writing. I’ve just been living, and it’s been awesome.
However, now I’m back and last night, while I was stressing over what to write, I had a bit of a think about my future and about where I want my life to go. With multiple questions asked about my future job aspirations from both my family and my colleagues, on an almost daily basis, I’ve decided to dedicate a blog to writing about my past job aspirations in order to shut out my self-doubt and panic about my future job prospects.
Growing up, I never really understood the urgency to secure my views on what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. In all honesty, picking something to stick by for my entire future, especially at such a young age, seemed pointless (and kind of scary). Most of the time I’m indecisive, and choosing something so permanent to hang on to with the commitment I would need is a bad idea (which is why, I think, I struggled so much with the idea of University). As a result, I’ve had many job aspirations throughout my life, starting from a very young age.
I must have been about five or six (but don’t quote me on this) when I started doing my mum’s hair. To start off with, I was awful, and all I would do was brush it or run my fingers through it. But as I got older, and I saw mum doing cool plaits and hairstyles on my sisters, and in my own hair, I started to get slightly more adventurous. I was having so much fun that, as a result, I set my views on becoming a hairdresser when I was older.
However, what I didn’t know at the time was that there’s a difference between being a hairdresser and a hairstylist. Considered I was better at the styling part of hair, such as the fun plaits and other weird braids (which I still sometimes do in my little sister’s hair if she lets me – and my two other sisters if they want their hair done), I should’ve set my aspirations on hairstyling. However, I didn’t know the difference back then and hairdressing sounded cool.
However, what I didn’t know at the time was that there’s a difference between being a hairdresser and a hairstylist. Considered I was better at the styling part of hair, such as the fun plaits and other weird braids (which I still sometimes do in my little sister’s hair if she lets me – and my two other sisters if they want their hair done), I should’ve set my aspirations on hairstyling. However, I didn’t know the difference back then and hairdressing sounded cool.
This aspiration was short lived. It only lasted a couple of years and was mostly used as an excuse when my teachers used to ask me what I wanted to be when I was older. When I got to secondary school, my sights changed. This was when I realised I actually really enjoyed learning about history, especially ancient history, along with the history of the First World War. After watching numerous episodes of ‘Time Team’ with my grandparents and my mum, Archaeology started to have some appeal.
The idea that I could dig up something awesome and ancient absolutely fascinated me. Being able to dig up history; find something that had never been found before, and study what life used to be like was amazing and was what I thought I wanted to do with my life. Staying around my grandparent’s home and going out on day trips with my other grandparents to visit cool castles, medieval houses and Victorian houses only encouraged my love of history and my interest in Archaeology.
However, when I started to look into it, I discovered that Archaeology was based quite a bit around different types of dirt and soil, and my interest started to waver. While I still love history, and finding out facts about the past, I didn’t really find the prospect of studying dirt for the rest of my life interesting. Therefore, my aspiration to become an Archaeologist started to crumble (haha – pun.)
As I found out, the sad part about being a teenager with very few friends is that I had a lot of time to myself going into the last years of secondary school. As a result, I spent more than my fair share of time on Netflix and reading books. This drastically influenced my job aspirations at the time. For quite a few of you reading this, especially my family, I’m sure you all know I had (and most likely still have) and obsession with Sherlock Holmes and how amazing of a detective he is. Also, the protagonist in my favourite book series, Sienna Nealon, at the time was also a detective.
Therefore, I wanted more than anything to follow in their footsteps and become a detective myself. This has stayed with me since, and I still think it would be super cool to one day make it as a detective. I think, partly, this is why I chose to complete a Criminology diploma in place of one of my A-levels. Studying criminal behaviour and finding out some of the motives behind what criminals do, interests me a lot. I also think being able to bring down a criminal and uncover admissible evidence that can prove guilt in court would be awesome.
However, being a detective also seems difficult for me. As previously mentioned, my self-doubt at this time in my life (which I’m working on) screams that I’m nowhere near intelligent enough to become an effective detective. Also, where I’d need to start in the policing system and the promotions I’d need to secure over a long period of time to become a detective seems slightly unrealistic to me.
However, being a detective also seems difficult for me. As previously mentioned, my self-doubt at this time in my life (which I’m working on) screams that I’m nowhere near intelligent enough to become an effective detective. Also, where I’d need to start in the policing system and the promotions I’d need to secure over a long period of time to become a detective seems slightly unrealistic to me.
In order to become a detective, there’s a long list of positions I’d have to climb my way through. This starts at a Police officer, which shortly became an aspiration of mine after the Westminster attack in 2017.
I’m not going to lie to all of you, physically I’m not fit in the slightest. I can barely run a hundred meters without collapsing, despite what my short-lived athletic streak in secondary school says (besides, I never competed in running, only ever Javelin – which is actually really fun). Being a police officer mostly appealed to me, I think, because I knew I needed to be one in order to progress to become a detective. I also liked the idea of being able to protect the public from danger, even though I knew it wasn’t something I could realistically do, considering my personality.
This aspiration was significantly shorter lived than my previous aspirations, lasting only a few weeks. From here, my views turned more towards the prospects of writing.
I knew from my third year of secondary school, despite my other ambitions at the time, that I wanted to – in some way – incorporate writing into my future. However, my mental state at the time, and my underdeveloped writing skills, never clearly cut my aspiration to become an author. At least, not full time. While I was really enjoying writing in my spare time, I wasn’t always encouraged to push myself enough (mostly because I kept being a writer very quiet for a very long time and because I knew it wasn’t going to be a financially easy nor a realistic career path at the time, especially with the poor marketing skills I had).
This made me turn, instead, to the idea of journalism. Arguably, this was one of my most exciting career aspirations and still has quite a lot of appeal to me – along with being a detective. Being a journalist, in a way, has an underlying tone of being a detective through what I’m good at – writing. However, while it has the strongest appeal to me, I know I don’t currently have the right amount of confidence to become a journalist. So, that might have to be something I work on over the next few years if my aspirations don’t change.
Being a journalist would be awesome, but I’m not sure if my published novels would negatively impact my chances. A dream of mine would be working as a journalist for the BBC, but it’s super competitive and (as I’ve mentioned) something I’d have to think about and probably complete as an apprenticeship – which are rare to come across when it comes to the BBC.
Also, my future, in a way, kind of relies mostly on my A-level results which I will receive tomorrow morning. If I want to have a somewhat academic career, such as journalism, or want to go into a profession such as becoming a detective, my grades are going to be something I have to worry about. I might also have to consider the possibility of University and getting a degree (which is something I don’t want to currently do at this time in my life).
But, despite this slight pressure, I know that grades aren’t everything. Most of the people in my life don’t have degrees and are amazing at their jobs. I also know that if I want to become a full-time author of fictional novels, it will be classed as self-employment and won’t at all depend on my grades.
I think, over the past year, I’ve learnt that in the end it doesn’t really matter what you do, whether you get the grades or go to University. All that matters is that you’re enjoying your life, what you’re doing and who you’re spending your time with.
So, there you go. An extra-long blog post this week which gives you another insight into my life. Hopefully, I’ll see you next week. I hope you enjoyed reading.
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