History by Nikki

It’s taken 38 years… but now I think I’m on the right path.

I was 21 and hopeful. It was the day that I got my undergraduate degree in maths, and I felt like a sea of opportunities would come my way. The cohort was fed that message during a STEM degree – it was a ticket. But six years later, after two abandoned attempts at further education in the same field, a teaching stint and a difficult and disappointing start to a financial services career, that hope had dissolved. I had no idea what I wanted or where I would end up. 

Feeling rootless, I returned to studying once again. It was the only thing that I had been good at, and the sole endeavour that gave me the feeling of achievement. I couldn’t face going back to maths because I hadn’t enjoyed taking it to the next level. So I took up the only other subject that I enjoyed reading about – history.

By this point, what I saw as my failures at education, jobs and sticking to anything in general had got the better of me and my confidence had crumbled. I started from the most basic level that I could, studying a GCSE in the evenings and weekends when I wasn’t at work, because I didn’t think I would be able to write a good essay and felt that I needed to learn as much as I could. That course expanded my knowledge for more than I thought it would, and I loved it. It also gave me the boost that I sorely needed, so I tentatively took the step forward and did an A-level in history, also outside of work. My confidence was recovering.

I went on and did an undergraduate degree in history, which I again started while working full-time in my financial services job. About two years in, when I felt that my career wasn’t going anywhere and my spirits were low because of that, I was fortunate enough to have saved enough money and have a cheap enough rent that I could take nearly two years off to finish that degree as a full-time student. This proved one of the best decisions I could have made, both for my own mental health and my performance in the degree. My improvement of the former resulted in me having the headspace that I needed to study and to study productively. I would recommend these sabbaticals to anyone who is able to afford to take one. For me it was a chance to isolate myself from a corporate world that I felt increasingly alienated from.

I knew that I wanted to go further again and do a Masters with a large research component. But I had one large problem. I was running short of money, and there was no way I was going to be able to do a postgraduate degree as a full time student. On top of this, we were living in rented accommodation that was in poor condition and I was desperate to get us out and into our own home. I had to go back to work. 

So once again, I returned to the financial services job that I knew so that I could pay those bills and the Masters fees, dedicating my evenings and weekends to further study. And it’s been incredibly hard. In the middle of the degree, I also changed jobs and that came with a heft of new challenges to deal with alongside the studying. Using my annual leave to travel to the university for residentials, day schools and supervisions, or to go to the archives to retrieve my sources; finishing work, closing the work computer and having a short break to eat before opening the study laptop; dedicating weekend after weekend to the research – it was difficult and tiring.

Maybe I didn’t need to spend as much time on the course as I did, perhaps I could have got similar results by being more efficient with my efforts, but I wanted to dedicate the hours to it. I genuinely enjoyed it, and when the time came for it to end I wanted to be able to say that I had achieved my best. Those feelings told me that historical research was what I want to do with my time, and that I am probably finally on the right path after so many changes and not quite getting to the finish line on other endeavours. And when I got the results of the first year essays, when I got the feedback from my dissertation supervisor at each meeting to review my work, when I got the final grades… I understood that the reward I was getting out of the experience matched in magnitude the effort that I was putting in.

Now, having finished that challenge, it’s time to consider what comes next. But that’s for another post. 

I’m writing this on my 38th birthday, and it has taken me this long to achieve a degree of contentment with what my life objectives are and how I’m choosing to spend my time. But that’s okay, because all of the meandering and difficulties taught me to be more resilient and I had experiences during it that gave me important qualities to allow me to cope better with what life throws my way. In all this time, the one thing that has given me stability is learning.