As I approach the end of my Degree
Three and a half months to go. I cannot believe I have such little time to go until the end of my Marketing Management BSc Hons Degree at the University of Northampton.
This long-anticipated moment comes as a relief, the end is near with just a few tricky weeks ahead. However, it is also tinged with sadness as the support from my tutors over the last 3 years has been incredible. I will be sad to say goodbye (maybe not so sad to say bye to a 4–6 evening lecture!) and of course filled with excitement, as I look forward to what lies ahead.
I feel the need to document this moment and as I wrote a LinkedIn article shortly after my first year at uni, which you can read here, I thought it was only right to follow that up.
My first article shared my experience of a marketing internship after completing the summer at PragmatiQ Solutions at the end of my first year. Almost two years later, I’m still at the company heading up the Marketing and learning new things every day. Had it not been for this job, my university experience would have been very different and I’m so pleased I decided to go down this route and gain my experience so early on in my degree.
University is brilliant and the skills and knowledge you learn are undeniably valuable, but nothing prepares you for transitioning these skills into the workplace and ultimately putting everything you have learned into practice. Working in a marketing role throughout my degree has allowed me to learn and explore so many new areas of the industry; SEO, running social media accounts, content strategy, planning & production, designing sales collateral, exhibiting at events, networking and more. During uni, you don’t get exposed to these areas, instead learning the skills and theory that will support you when that exposure comes.
I guess I am sharing this not to boast, but instead to encourage students currently doing their degree to go out and gain experience. Throughout my time at PragmatiQ Solutions, I have had the opportunity to speak to a variety of business people, many of whom speak of how important experience is for them when hiring.
Be proactive, seek out opportunities to help and gain experience wherever you can, leverage the tools you have available (LinkedIn is a great way of building connections and finding opportunities), speak to as many people as you can — you never know what you might learn and most importantly, be willing to put in the hard work. From first-hand experience, juggling work and a degree is no easy feat, but as I reflect back on the last couple of years and where I am now, it’s worth it and hopefully, I can encourage someone else to do the same.
I’ll leave you with a quote I came across a few weeks ago which I think sums up my thoughts perfectly and demonstrates the importance of knowing and believing your own potential;
“Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities. They vary in their desires to reach their potential.” — John Maxwell
