Life is full of decisions, and we can sometimes have no concept of where that decision will ultimately take us. Sometimes it can take us on such journeys of discovery that are completely profound and wonderful though the initial decision in and of itself was quite simple. Other times, we can make a decision that we know will have ripple effects, but we can never know exactly how they’re going to pan out. But whatever you do, whatever decision you make never beat yourself up about it. You took it for the right reasons at the time with the information you had available to you at the time. And eventually, it will come good.
The decision that I made which helped me learn and grow was the decision, at 18, not to go to university to study law. I was all prepped and ready, I was sitting the A’Levels that I had been told would stand me in good stead for a law degree. I had selected the university I wanted to attend, and I had received my offer from them for a place. And I had spent school holidays interning in solicitors’ offices for the previous 2 years, since I had turned 16. I was all set and ready to go. But. And it was a big BUT. I didn’t want to. I did not want to leave home in London and go to Leeds University because it just didn’t feel right.
I had spent the previous 8 years being groomed to go to university, preferably to read law with the ultimate ambition of being a barrister. It was something I had always focused upon but it was, really, never truly my decision. I was told that it would suit me because I have a very strong sense of justice, I am always the person to fight for the underdog. Now, I think those are the exact reasons why my decision not to study law was 100% right for me. I would either have been destroyed by the system, or my natural personality would have hardened into something completely different. Because, as I learned as an intern, you didn’t always have the luxury of defending the innocent. So while I do love justice, while I do love a good debate, while I will fight tooth and nail for the underdog I knew deep down that the law was not for me. The problem I had was that, at 18, I was nervous to tell my family this. That the path they had mapped out for me was not the right one. So, I put it off and put it off for as long as I could and carried on smiling and nodding whenever anyone talked about me going to Leeds.
I think underneath all of this as well was the fact that I didn’t want to leave what was known to me. I had had a lot of trauma in my teenage years, and I honestly do not think I had the emotional bandwidth or maturity to move hundreds of miles away from home and get on with a difficult degree course. There is no doubt in my mind that I would have failed spectacularly. My friend’s sister was at university and the way she talked about it when home wasn’t exciting and thrilling to me, it was terrifying. At the time I didn’t understand why I felt this way, I just knew that I avoided talking to her about it which now I think about it shows my subconscious fear of leaving what was familiar because it was something I clung to after too much tumultuous change.
My answer was to not do as well in my A’Levels as I knew I could do. I figured that if I failed them, I wouldn’t be able to go and I wouldn’t have to have the difficult conversation. If I didn’t get the grades, that was that. Right? Wrong. I didn’t fail my A’Levels but I didn’t get the grades that Leeds wanted. I did, though, get sufficient grades to go elsewhere as the careers advisor told me in front of my mother. She suggested I went into Clearing to find somewhere. My plan had backfired, really, and I had to come clean. My stepdad was talking about possibly re-sitting my exams the following year to improve my grades to get to Leeds standards while my grandmother just watched me go more and more into myself. I remember feeling really annoyed with myself in the end that I hadn’t done as well as I had been expected to as it was my first experience of academic failure and it didn’t sit well with me. Even if I had pretty much knowingly sabotaged myself.
So, in the end, I had to come clean. I actually don’t remember what happened, I think I’ve blocked it out, but I know it was my grandmother who came to my rescue. She pointed out to my mum and stepdad that if it didn’t feel right to me, then the best decision I could make was to not go, and that universities were not going anywhere so I could always go at a later date. It was as though she had had a premonition. My mum didn’t really talk to me for a while and I was left in no doubt that I was a disappointment to her. It was also very clear that I had to get a full-time ‘proper’ job and fast, that my part-time checkout work in Tesco was not going to be tolerated. As luck would have it, my friend worked in an investment bank in the City and she put me forward for a job she had heard about in the bank. It was supposed to be fixed-term because the person who had been doing the job was travelling for six months, but I figured if I got it at least I had a foothold in the door. In the end, the person continued travelling and the bank decided not to hold the post open for them. So, after nine months of doing the job I was made permanent.
What followed was 4 years of working in the City in a variety of jobs, each of which bored me to tears. I hated the work, loved the atmosphere and the social life but it was burning me out even at 22. To say I burned the candle at both ends with colleagues was an understatement. It was coming back from a holiday in America with some friends that made me confront how I was feeling. I burst into tears suddenly on the plane, saying that I worked 48 weeks a year and I’d just used up 2 of the weeks off. The thought of going back to that life was just horrible. And on that flight I devised a plan for going to university after all, initially to study English Literature. I figured I had spent too long out of studying so as soon as I got back home I enrolled in two evening classes – English Literature and History. Within 4 weeks of starting, I had dumped English Literature for Creative Writing and was fully in love with History. That was going to be my degree, I had decided.
And it was. I ended up going to Cardiff University, which I utterly adored and excelled in my undergraduate degree. I then went to Sussex University to study my Masters for which I earned a great mark though I hadn’t enjoyed the experience quite as much, a lot because my beloved grandmother had just died. I did toy with the idea of a PhD but funding was almost impossible to get hold of, I didn’t want to do it at Sussex and the option at Cardiff where I did want to go, had been taken by those studying their Masters there. So, I went back into the workforce. By a stroke of serendipity, I landed a job at English Heritage in the marketing department, and I learned that I could combine the economic experience I had gained in the City with my love of all things history and come up with things that were genuinely helpful. For the first time in my life, I felt as though I belonged somewhere. The pay was awful, but the role itself was perfect for me.
Then came the expectation to purchase a property, something I managed while at English Heritage but it was a financial struggle. So, I moved on but utilising the skills I had learned at EH in being able to bring together my knowledge of economics and culture to, in the end, put culture at the heart of regeneration and economic growth. It gave me the skills to write funding bids as I had ended up doing at EH, bringing in public and private money to deprived areas to give them the boost they desperately needed. I had started this career avenue with more expertise in project development, and ended it back to the more economic side with a focus on business support and skills. I climbed the ladder until I ended up as a CEO of an economic agency, providing insight into macro and micro economic issues as well as pursuing funding and delivering business support programmes to help small businesses in specific sectors.
So, in taking the decision at 18 not to attend university to study law, I ended up in a career that gave me 30 years of focus in a field I had never considered, along with a degree that refined that focus into something I loved. I adored how culture can make a huge difference to people’s lives, and I felt fulfilled that I was able to make that difference. I still look at some of the projects I was involved in, and smile to myself as I remember how hard often they were fought for. I don’t regret my 18 year old self decision, it was completely the right thing to do. I would almost certainly have failed at my degree for a plethora of reasons, but in the process I learned a huge amount.
I learned to trust my gut. I couldn’t escape the fact that going to university felt all different kinds of wrong. I really liked Leeds both the place and the university, but the more I had thought about it the more I realised the whole thing wasn’t for me. And I learned that trying to fail exams didn’t hurt anyone but me! As a way forward, it wasn’t the most inspired but I was desperate. And it has taught me that we know ourselves, we know what is and isn’t right for us. While there are a lot of people around us who want the best for us, we have to ask: whose best? It’s like when parents say ‘I want my child to be happy’ what they perhaps don’t think is whose definition of happiness are they working from? Despite the fact I was only 18, I knew deep inside myself what was right for me it was just those around me thought they knew better which was why I struggled to come clean with my decision. So, I learned to trust my gut. As I trusted my gut when I did decide to go to university and to study history. I knew in my soul it was the right thing for me, it is still a subject that is my favourite. I love reading The Autodidact Professor’s blogs on here, they’re so interesting and insightful it’s a complete treat when they land in my inbox.
The journey wasn’t always easy, the time I spent in the City, 5 years in the end, were the happiest when I knew I was leaving well in advance of when I did due to the university application process. But I grew from that experience. It was one of the things that taught me to keep on going, to not fall into the pit of despair but to work through the process of figuring out what to do instead then taking the steps towards doing so. Of being quiet sometimes and let the inspiration come to you. It taught me resilience, something I have drawn upon over and over again since. I grew from being in university as well. I moved away from home in the end, and have done so numerous times since, and I grew hugely from that experience. Managing myself, studying and being very responsible was like a finishing school for me. And I grew immensely from telling my family that I was not going to do something they expected me to do, standing up and taking responsibility for my own decisions. Growth comes in the easy times, absolutely, but the really transformative growth happens in the difficult times when you learn who you truly are. When you learn what your strength is, what your intuition is telling you, and what it is you truly want.
I am trusting my gut again, 36 years later, to move forward on my writing journey. To make certain decisions that I come to recently, decisions when I think about them make me feel excited to my core. So, yes, that decision I took at 18 is still helping me to learn and grow all these years later. I am so grateful to it.
Louisa Simpson 