Career Development Planning - a different way

Sarah Ashford-Brown
BA Cultural and Media Studies

Photo taken by Minori Iwahash

Career Development Planning - a different way

While most students at university have ‘the best years of their lives’, partying, having fun and being hungover, I spent my three years at uni (and year in industry) working on my future.
No time for parties, just time to  focus on my CV, networking skills and making contacts.
And it’s a lot easier than you can imagine.

First, I joined The Gryphon, then Her Campus, writing gig, singles and album reviews, and fashion articles. It’s easy to write on things you love (in my case Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Miley Cyrus and Harry Styles, among others), or things you don’t. Not only you see your work being valued and published online (or in print), but you will see your evolution in writing skills. This is a great thing to show to your future employer(s).

I have always liked being in front of the camera, I therefore used these three years at uni to model for the university newspapers, uni students with their graduate collections, and much more.

Use whatever university has to offer, especially when you’re interested in the creative industries. Make friends, make contacts, make moves. Modelling gave me the confidence to reach out to brands, with designers sending me clothes that I would style, wear, and would organise shoots for. I joined Leeds Rag Fashion Show as a stylist, met some incredible creatives along the way, and carried on modeling alongside. 

It’s not only aside from my studies that I work towards my dream job. Studying such a broad and open course like Cultural and Media Studies, I am able to do my assessments around what interests me: I have had the opportunity to write about musical artists who I love, which now led me to write a whole 15 000 words dissertation on those. Why not make university work fun as well as useful for job applications?

After two years at uni, mostly keeping myself busy to fight depression, I went on a year in industry back home, in Paris. This was the best decision I could have made, as I made contacts, secured job opportunities in the fashion world and at the Cannes Film Festival doing exactly what I love to do, gained valuable experience, and most of all confidence. But I wouldn’t have been able to do any internship in such big companies without putting myself out there in Leeds.

I won’t lie, coming back to university after a year of independence, living the dream life, wasn’t easy. I still struggle (months after) to focus on my work. I only see myself in the future, after graduation. But again, I had to remind myself that I should use my time here wisely. Since coming back, while most of my coursemates have graduated, I have found myself spending a lot of time with creatives who stayed in Leeds after graduation, shooting with them as much as possible, meeting videographers, MUAs, hair stylists, photographers, graphic designers etc., and when studying at university, spending time with returning placement year students who find themselves in the same situation as me.

I have organised shoots in Paris, bringing a team of women creative back home to create visual content for brands, winning a trip to NYC with Bershka for a photoshoot I organised for fun with my photographer friend, and I am now helping out a friend organise a trip to California for her final year project alongside writing my dissertation. As she would say, most students have a part time job alongside uni, we have uni alongside a full time job.

I won’t lie, I do not have one minute to myself, constantly working on the next project, but everything is there. You can dream big, work from the university for anything you want to achieve, you are surrounded by talented and ambitious people.

I struggled to make the best friends I was promised to find at university during my two  first years. But by the end of final year, I have made the best friends I could have dreamt of, secured jobs, have exciting projects to look forward to, and I am the happiest I’ve ever been in Leeds.

Get yourself out there, talk to people, join societies, go to media events, everything is at your fingertips.