I’ve been in college for nearly a full year now and I can safely say undertaking a journalism degree was one of my better decisions. But it was a last minute one, mainly because of the stigma that media jobs are obsolete.
I’ve always enjoyed writing but never wanted, and still don’t want, people to read my fiction, so from young enough I had dreams of being a journalist. Until I forgot about them. Yep, that’s right. I forgot I wanted to do journalism.
In secondary school I had this obsession with looking up courses and colleges. As in, I was just starting TY and knew what courses in what colleges had what modules. During this time, I was dead set on doing Politics and International Relations. I enjoy politics, I can write essays and I like languages so it seemed obvious to my 15-year-old self and I even decided that DCU was the best place to do it. So while everyone else was still going to teen discos and still thinking about their Junior Cert results, I was planning my future.
The same year, I re-watched the entirety of Grey’s Anatomy and looked up how to become a surgical nurse. Did it really matter if I didn’t have Junior Cert Science? I’m sure I could pick it up…
TY also saw me investigate computer science, video games and animation. I liked the idea of it, it would pay well but I was god awful at maths and couldn’t draw to save my life.
In 5th year I went to the DCU open day, where going to the Politics and International Relations talk wasn’t even on my agenda because I had already forgotten about it. Instead, I found myself at a talk for Global and International Business studies. Guess what I came away wanting to do? I also attended a talk on Journalism and Communications but didn’t think a lot of it as the journalism course required a B1 in English and Communications didn’t sound overly appealing. So now I wanted to do business, and I hope you’re keeping up.
I also went to a UCC open day that year where I decided that Government would be a great course for me. At this time, I was feeling pessimistic about my Leaving Cert, found the lowest points course in UCC and was surprised to find I would actually be okay if that happened to me. I was convinced that’s where I was headed. But they were also launching a new film course and I liked watching movies and their facilities were cool, so I wanted to do that too.
In my final year at school, I decided there was no way in hell I was doing business in college. Everyone wanted to do business in college. It’s not that I wanted to be different, I just wanted a more definite direction. Business was my best subject by a long way and everyone presumed I would want to go into that field but I couldn’t, and still can’t, imagine anything worse. So I looked elsewhere, again.
This is when law happened.
A couple of months in to 6th year I went to UL where the only talk I went to was for Law Plus and the guy made it sound perfect for me, and I thought it was. Up until then I had never told anyone about my career musings, even when I thought I was dead set on one. But I decided this time I finally had to reveal to people my true career path – law. It did not help that I was on a Suits binge when I decided this.
I filled out the CAO with things like Law, European Studies and International Relations and got used to the idea of having picked my course and could now focus on getting the points for it. I had brief moments of wanting Criminology in UCC and placed it on my CAO too, but I wanted to go to Limerick more than I wanted to go to Cork.
Then CAO deadline day came. The Leaving Cert was over, I was confident I had done well and would be able to begin Law Plus in September, but there had been something in the back of my mind for a few weeks. I remembered the Evie from a few years back who liked newspapers and writing, and I thought about what law would really be like, because I was definitely not as cool as Mike Ross. And I changed it. You heard me, I changed it, on deadline day, and that’s okay.
It’s okay to change your mind and it’s okay to choose what you love instead of what people think might make you more money. I don’t know if there’ll be a job for me at the end of my time in UL but I’m being given the best opportunities. With my course, I’m learning a language, I get six months of work placement and I get to study abroad. Those experiences will help me no matter where I end up.
I think the most important piece of advice I can give anyone is that you have to give things a chance or you’ll regret it and waste your time wondering ‘what if?’ I put down Journalism and New Media in UL, I got the points and started the course in September and I haven’t looked back since.
(Yes, I did tweet that six years ago and now I’m fulfilling the dream. Cute.)
Evie - Not The Pokémon 