To do a degree in fashion is hard in itself but the pressure that comes with it is on another level of hard to deal with.
I am currently in second year of a fashion business and promotion degree, and I love it. I never enjoyed any point of education until I started a degree in something that I loved.
However, I didn’t know the outside pressure that would follow doing a degree within the fashion industry.
I am constantly bombarded by the opinions of others telling me that my degree is a waste of time and that I’ll never get a job. I’m so fed up with being constantly mocked for MY choice in degree.
Once my co-worker sarcastically asked me what job I could get out of doing my degree. To that I responded, “there’s so many it’s impossible to even count”. He didn’t believe me and made me tell him all the jobs I could think of off the top of my head. This opinion is coming from someone who decided to drop out of college and has been doing a gap life ever since. Have I ever judged his choices or anyone else’s choice in career or education? NO I haven’t and I never will.
I don’t really understand the need to put people down over their choice In degree at the end of the day it’s their life not mine. So why do people put down a degree in the arts or fashion so easily.
I think most judgement comes from people who choose degrees in stuff that they think is guaranteed to get them job which isn’t as guaranteed as they are told or believe. I’ve always been told if you do a degree in something “sensible” you will always be guaranteed a job straight out of graduation but recently I’ve been told that is in fact not true.
People with sensible degrees like psychology, computer science, nursing, etc are always told they will be guaranteed a job post grad but are actually struggling to find a job or are struggling to find a job that can actually support them. So where is the judgement for their degree? There just isn’t one. It just seems frowned upon to do a degree in something that’s a little more out there and requires a different skill set.
Of course, fashion is a hard industry to get into but there is so many possibilities it is endless. They think the only option in job is shopfloor manager or to own your own business when in fact that has never been true.
How they think a multi-million-pound industry can rely on just those job roles baffles me, which proves my point of the fact they don’t actually know what they are placing judgement upon. They don’t understand the endless possibilities, they are confined into a box. That box is okay for some I just personally would rather look outside the box of normality and choose a degree I enjoy.
The judgement is really hard to deal with and sometimes I find myself second guessing my choices and am sent into an internal panic about my future. It’s easy to let people who do not understand what they are talking about cloud your judgement and that’s when I remember I couldn’t see myself doing any other degree and to use judgement as a driver to succeed and prove these people wrong!
At the end of a day a degree is a degree, and it does not guarantee you a job no matter if you do it in biology or fashion marketing, but I do know there is more of a chance succeeding in something you’re obsessed with then something you are just casual about doing because you want a “decent job”.
At the end of the day obsession will always beat talent and I’m not willing to do a degree in something I do not enjoy!
So, to all my Arts, literacy, fashion and “no job” degree students I salute you and I hope like me you see this judgement as a driver to your success.
Bisous Charl x
Charl Brown 