Hi I'm Cora
Hi I'm Luke
And today we're talking about life after school
So when you're getting towards the end of school you can suddenly feel all this pressure
about what am I gonna do with my life and like you need to choose just one thing that
you wanna do
Me still now!
yeah
What am I gonna do with my life. Yeah.
Um yeah I think I defiantly like.. Throughout my life I've had. When I was like 8 I wanted
to be a train driver, and then up until I was 15 I wanted to be a physicist and I wanted
to go to manchester university and be taught by brian cox.SO that was a goal of mine
Nice!
Uh, and then I wanted to do film, and then I got distracted by youtube, and then I was
doing sort of both of them at the same time and so I think even now everyone's lost.Some
people are really assured of themselves, but it's perfectly natural to be trying to work
out what you wanna do. I guess the advice i was given at that was just keep your options
as open as possible. and so doing quite broad A-Levels if you're really unsure like things
that you can use and apply to anything, like English or physics or maths, that are quite
um, but that's not to say or to discourage people from doing something specific they
love, I was talked out of doing media studies and then doing film studies and I kind of
regret that because it wasn't time I had to sort of learn those things. But I think talking
to people, talk to teachers, talk to parents who've sort of gone through life and know
a bit more than you and if you can and are happy to, keep your options as widely open
as possible. And then if you're happy to keep those options open, in your spare time learn
the things you're passionate about. You don't have to necessarily have to do an a level
in it to keep your options open
Yeah definitely and there's also people you can talk to like careers advisors, who, that's
their job is to help you figure out what you wanna do.
Yeah
And how to do it
Yeah, going along to like, if your lost and you wanna say like I kinda wanna do physics
kinda wanna do animal welfare, then do a bit of those things. Like go down for an hour
to your animal place or to a university and look at physics, and see what makes you excited
exactly, I think that's quite a main point is what makes you excited because you spend
so much of your life at work once you have a job.It needs to be something you enjoy doing
or that you care about, and if that's possible for you then go for it
especially if it's literally like 30,40,50 hours of your week times by your life, then
yeah, try and work out what you like.
Yeah and like you said earlier like everyone sometimes feels a bit lost about what they
want and you dont have to choose just one thing that's not the path for the rest of
your life
exactly i mean I was saying my way up here to film this I was saying that Im like the
prime example of this because I went to school and messed up my a levels because was distracted
by doing silly creative things, and then I did another year. So ive done that and then
I went to university despite not really being that keen to do university and then I quit
university and then did my personal trying to make it on my own
I went to uni for one year I went because i felt like a lot of the people watching this
I felt like it was the thing I had to do i was sort of encouraged about the idea of going
to university and i was scare of not going to university and that's not to say it's not
the right thing for some people, of course it is. But I went for one year and a year
in i sort of went uhhh no and left. and that's also fine. both of those are valid choices
in life obviously there are some jobs where you really have to have a degree but there
are some things like working in the media like i do where you don't have to have a degree
and not having a degree is a perfectly valid choice
So like with uni it can feel on the run up to your exams and your result time really
really stressful in case you didn't get the right grades to like get into the uni you
want but there are options available if you don't quite get the grades you wanted
so the two options you have are that if you still wanna go to uni you can do clearing
which is where other universities that maybe weren't our first choice have spare places
and will offer them up and you can do that through UCAS and i know people who've done
that and been very happy with the choices they made
Or you can do what i did when i didn't get my first grades first time round was i went
back to sixth form and i did another half year to get a few of my grades up and that
at the time i was so ashamed of that like i was devastated that I had to do it. But
actually that year was time for me to do part time learning, part time becoming a functioning
adult in the world, and I really would encourage people if thats what they have to do not to
be ashamed.
like your just trying to work harder and do good things and get grades you wanna get so
thats another option if you dont get the grades you want
So depending what it is that you wanna do in the future you're saying theres some jobs
where you really dont need to go to uni to do them, and an option for some of those roles
could be things like apprenticeships
Yep now ive never done an apprenticeship but I have done sort of the equivalent which is
learning on the job and that's sort of one approach it's somewhere in between like education
and working where your paid like an often lower wage than the standard wage, but your
employer is sort of training you up to work in that industry and often you can then stay
on in that company I know people who have apprentishinps and they then worked at that
company for several years.
if apprenticeships or uni aren't for you then theres also the option of actually going out
and working
so yeah i guess if you can prove i think that you're doing 20 hours or more a week in kind
of working or training or volunteering and so if your fear is unhappiness, then really
focus on the stuff your passionate about because you have to do that and you have to do it
every day for a good portion of your life and the thing is that can be scary but you
can, if you fail, you can go back to uni. you can go back to college. My mum re-trained
when she was 50 as a teacher. she'd been a nurse for like the majority of her life and
retrained as a teacher and now shes a teacher. it's not like your life has to be decided
when you're 18 years old 19 years old and that's it. Um you can change as many times
as you like during your life
Never to late
no
thank you so much for coming in and talking to us today
you're welcome the pleasure was all mine
and we'll see you next time. bye!