Why Changemaker could help you figure your life out.
Date 10 November 2022
The writer describes how the Changemaker Team enabled her to feel more confident in stepping outside of her comfort zone, in order to make important decisions for her future career.
As students it’s very important that we take advantage of and use every support service that the University provides. A mistake that I made throughout my time studying at the University of Northampton was that I didn’t make full use of the university’s support system – for example, the Changemaker Team.
Going into the first year of my studies, I thought I knew what I wanted to do after I completed my degree – the master’s course I would go on to do and which career path I wanted to take. But going into the second year, I slowly lost confidence in that plan and began to consider multiple career changes.
Let’s just say, if I was to use two words to describe my second year, it would be chaos and confusion. One second I wanted to be an interior designer to a wedding planner, and the next I wanted to work at a hospital with children. Now, this isn’t exactly the best place to be when you are at the end of your second year going into your third year and you should be starting to plan for your dissertation and thinking about which topic it should be based on.
When my confusion started, I should have approached the Changemaker Team straight away – they would have definitely helped me figure out what I wanted to do after I finished studying. By the time I started my third year, I came to the conclusion that I really needed to get in contact with them and receive some advice, so I booked an initial appointment to talk about my plans. Better late than never.
After a few meetings with the Changemaker Team team, I started to have a clearer idea of what I wanted to do after I completed my degree and I realised which master’s would be correct for my choice of career. They also helped me to look at volunteering opportunities to support my future employability and the various different career path options that I could take – I even discovered some jobs that I didn’t know about, but found very interesting!
In conclusion, most of us go to university with a career in mind, but some of us go to university with no idea what we would like to do career-wise. Whether you know or not, take advantage of the fact that the University of Northampton has an amazing team at Student Futures and that they will help you more than you realise.
Pel graduated from UON in 2022, with a degree in Health Studies and Applied Social Care. She’s now preparing to follow her dreams of working with the British Red Cross or United Nations.