Fuck guys, I’m so sorry after reading some of these stories. We’ve all seen some crazy shifts in our lifetimes.
Scotland still has ‘free’ tuition fees for undergraduates and offers a low(ish) interest rate on living costs. I left Uni in 2011 with a (lol) useless undergraduate arts degree at a time when most graduate employers weren’t hiring and the few that were became near impossible to get in.
While I was an idiot for not knowing at 18 what I was going to do with my degree, I was fed a half-truth as fact that 60%+ of degrees will get you anywhere. That maybe was once true, but then 2008 happened.
I became very disillusioned at the whole system. Took a minimum wage job, drank too much, smoked alot of weed… but I still count myself lucky as I wasn’t riddled with debt.
Once I’d got the rage out my system, I looked about the job market to see what jobs paid decent amounts. I did a Finance Masters in 2016-2017, which I did pay out my own pocket with loans, but even then it only cost me about £12,000 including living costs, which sounds cheap compared to the USA.
My masters degree meant a top tier consultancy would even consider me. Two telephone interviews, one group assessment day and a final in person interview with a partner later and I’d fucking done it. Jumped from making £17k a year to a ‘entry level’ £30k a year job. It was life changing.
Once I got in, I totally killed it at work. I guess because I was in my late 20s and had been through alot of shit, I was alot hungrier than most 21 year olds fresh out of Undergraduate studies bitching about how £30k is hard to live on. I’ve been promoted a couple of times since, life is feeling good at the moment.
That’s a long post, but for me going back in to do a one year masters was a gamble that paid off, mainly as a course correction to get into jobs that I was always capable of doing, but I didn’t have the right piece of paper at the start.
