When I opened my A level results day envelope I was a bit gutted, I hadn't done amazingly, yet I hadn't failed either. So why did I feel so gutted? I had passed my exams & my place was ready for me at Portsmouth university for 2013 after my gap year. But I just couldn't feel excited or happy. I felt numb looking around at everyone else so excited to be going away to university & starting this new chapter in their lives.
I guess I felt so gutted because I genuinely had NO idea what I wanted to do. The course I had gotten onto at Portsmouth wasn't really what I wanted to do but as it was a "degree" and I had achieved the grades to go it was the one I applied for. I watched as my friends and school mates went off to start their careers & it was SUCH an odd feeling.
I started my internship at a local theatre company which I thought I would be doing for my entire gap year. I loved the theatre, I still love the theatre & being on stage in the West End would be the ultimate dream. But this internship wasn't really what I expected it to be and so I left.
I then got a job at Sainsbury's bakery which got me through for a few months, but I felt so useless in my bakers hat and apron, slicing peoples bread and packing rolls. I felt so incomplete and I was miserable. This is going to sound pretty drastic but my life all changed (for worse & then better) one Saturday in January. I was totally and completely in love, and I had in some ways taken a gap year for the sake of my relationship. But it fell apart. It wasn't meant to be. And so there I was, with no friends around me, heartbroken, working in a bakery that I felt so inferior in & I was so so miserable.
I lost so much weight, I was not myself. I had lost myself through stress of my future and through wanting to be part of a two rather than comfortable on my own.
Somebody very generous saw my miserable state. They saw my pain and they said to me "What do you need?" I don't know why I said it, and maybe it was a bit of a joke, but I said "I need to go to the other side of the world for a little while" And just like that, the money had been given, the plane ticket was booked & I was on my way to Australia.
I thought in Australia I would find myself & come back completely healed & knowing what I wanted to do with my life. And in some ways, it did that. I found out that I am stronger and braver than I used to think I was, and I let go of a lost love overlooking the sea. I also sat in a café on the beach and applied for beauty school back home in London, as that was a hobby I enjoyed and after being so miserable in a job beforehand I wanted to work in something I loved.
So, back home from Australia & I started at beauty college. It was hard work, long days & hours and commuting into London. And surprise surprise it wasn't what I wanted to go into anymore. But this course was a wake up call for me. When I was carrying out treatments on clients, I realised I liked to talk to them and they would open up and tell me their problems (beauty THERAPIST eh?) The girls at college were all so lovely and when they would ask about my past and school they would all say "Why aren't you at university?" "You are so bright!" It made me think that maybe, just maybe a university would accept me for a social work course. Social work had always been close to my heart (Tracy Beaker has a lot to do with that!)
I looked up social work courses in December 2013 and my heart sank. I did NOT have the grades that any of the universities were asking for. But I thought, heck, I'll give it a go. I applied for 5 universities: Kingston, Sussex, Canterbury, Winchester and York. Straight away Kingston, Sussex and Canterbury declined me. I was feeling at a low again when an email popped through from York. They had invited me to an interview. I laughed out loud. YORK UNIVERSITY? Up there as a top 10 in England? I had no where near the grades they were asking! But off my ma and I set to York. I have never been so nervous as I was before that interview. It was intense, with a written exam, a group activity and then my one on one. The first question the interviewer asked me was "Bethany, do you think you could of worked harder at school?" I think I laughed. Of course I could of! "What stopped you?" And then the babble of the past 2 years of my life came flowing out my mouth. This interviewer was clever. In asking me that question he heard all my life experience in the space of 5 minutes. He didn't care about my grades. He wanted to know about ME.
I didn't hear back from York for ages, and meanwhile I had an interview at Winchester. I was gutted when I got rejected from Winchester as ideally I wanted to go somewhere nearer home. But eventually it came through, I had gotten into The University of York to study Social work. I was so so happy. I was working at the time for SNOG and it really felt like I finally knew in which direction my life was going in.
So there we have it, 2 years of my life summed up in a blog post. I'm off to York in 12 days & I am nervous but excited & feel a total sense of peace that there is where I am meant to be. It has taken a long time, and it's been a long tough road but I've made it, with thanks to my loving family and God.
Adventure is out there.
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