It’s 1991. I’m in my gcse year at school. I hate my school, like really, really hate it. I’m counting down the days until I can leave.
For GCSE I’m doing the usual compulsory subjects plus history, geography, art and textiles. Most subjects bore me but I really love art and textiles. These lessons are the highlights of my week. I’m predicted great grades in these two as well. I spend all my free time being creative, just doing the bare minimum of any other homework. I’m always making things and I sell them at craft fairs, it’s a lot of fun.
Back at school, in the spring term, students in my year group all have some careers sessions. In the library we do questionnaires and quizzes and get suggestions. All my answers point to a creative career. I’m excited at the prospect. Next, we get a one to one interview with the “careers expert” teacher, I’ll call him Mr L.
Mr L asks me a few questions about what I enjoy. I tell him how much I love being creative. I tell him everything needs designing, so many products and things need designers. I tell him I want to design things, I want to create things. He looks unimpressed.
He sighs. I’m pretty sure he even rolls his eyes. He tells me I need to be more realistic. That’s not a career for you he says. That’s not an option. He implies I’m not good enough at art. He implies that other students are far better than me, they’re the ones that should pursue this. It’s very competitive he says. I’m crushed. I stay quiet. He continues but I’m not really listening. I have no idea what he is recommending for me to do instead. I get the impression it’s very dull indeed. Eventually he hands me a couple of leaflets and I leave the room.
I’m angry and upset. In my heart I know he’s wrong. I know that being a designer is a career and is an option for me. But now, thanks to the sigh and the eye roll, I’m embarrassed. I feel like I’m idealistic and foolish to think I could be talented enough to do that. Looking back, I’m certain he’d never seen any of my artwork so how could he know? But at the time I was told he was the expert and he’d told me that I wasn’t good enough.
So, thanks to that momentary interaction, I abandoned any ideas I had of taking the creative route. After GCSEs I was very happy to leave school behind and go to a 6th form college. I focussed on history and after my A levels I got a place at University of Sheffield to study Archaeology & Prehistory. Fortunately I enjoyed this. It was a really positive environment. Here you were judged on your own merit and there was lots of independent learning. It suited me and I really thought my future career would be in archaeology. It didn’t quite turn out that way. I did take a more creative route. And in the end, I have ended up being a designer. Thanks to Mr L, just 30 years later than I should have done.
You can find out how my creative career evolved and how I eventually got into designing in my next blog post