At school I was an absolute nerd. Peak nerd. Disappointed with the one B I got at GCSE because it ruined the A/A* streak nerd (humble brag).

But when it came to picking subjects for my A-Levels, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew I loved spending time on social media and how the internet was connecting the millennial generation (RIP MSN), but when it came to actual work? No idea. Which is how I ended up doing an eclectic mix of Maths, Physics, English Lit and Textiles.

I went through a phase of wanting to be a lawyer (thank you Legally Blonde), editor of Vogue (God bless The Devil Wears Prada) and finally stumbled upon a Fashion Communication and Promotion course at the University of Huddersfield.

Going to uni was always on my horizon, as it was drilled into me at school that it was the only way to succeed in life. This is absolutely untrue, but it was the narrative that supported the stats they needed to hit.

Having seen my mum go university when I was little, whilst working full time, it meant that it never felt like something that was out of reach. Even if my parents did tell me at age 16 that if I wanted to go to uni, to get a job now and save for it (which I did).

Throughout my degree, I concluded pretty quickly that whilst I wasn’t cool or edgy enough to go into the fashion industry, I quite liked the marketing module. The rest of it? I chalked it up as some very expensive life experience. In fact, I remember being told that if I wanted to do a placement year, I’d need my parents to be willing to stump up the cash for me to work in London for free – and that was never going to happen.

Instead, I cracked on with my third year and graduated with a 2.1 that I scraped by the skin of my teeth.

Following university, a year back home saw me temping my way around York, from working at the races to a six-month stint in credit control for an events company. Eventually, I landed my first ‘career’ job.

I uprooted my life and travelled down the A64 to Leeds to spend a year in an agency grad scheme. I worked my way around the business, eventually landing in social content, where I stayed for another 18 months.

In mid 2015, social was still a fairly early offering for social media in agencies so needless to say, it was a huge period of both learning and occasionally f*cking up whilst managing various accounts. Because I was the only one ‘doing social’, I ended up in front of clients very early on and gained some great experience that way. I also realised that I could become passionate about anything if I worked on it for long enough. For a period of time, that was motorcycles, classic cars, new build homes and holidays to Florida.

Following this first role, I joined another integrated agency in Leeds as Social Media Manager. I spent nearly two years there, working on a range of clients from ferries to blood donation. I also had the opportunity to work on more integrated accounts and I began to see how social fitted into a far bigger picture.

After a brief stint where I went to the dark side of in house, I headed straight back into the agency world and landed a role at HOME (pre-merger with IMA), in the summer of 2019. I started as a Communications Manager and eventually worked my way up to Social Media Account Director. I now head up the social media offering at the agency, and no day is the same.

I get to work on incredible brands, activating strategies which give everything I do a purpose and rationale, and then get to the end of a campaign and analyse the results in a beautifully formatted spreadsheet. I’m fortunate that my role allows me to develop as a line manager whilst still ‘doing the doing’ of running social media accounts and being in the thick of it.