What do Education graduates do next?
Growing up as a Free School Meals student from a single-parent family, Cambridge always felt more like a myth than reality.
But academia was always something that I excelled in. So, after encouragement from my mother, I applied for and was offered a space on the CUSU Shadowing Scheme. Being surrounded by curious, passionate individuals from all walks of life, with one thing in common being a love for their subject - it just wasn't something I'd ever known before.
I loved where I came from - but at Cambridge I was excited. Motivated. Myself. I knew I had to apply.
I was attracted to the interdisciplinary nature of Education, so I emailed the Education Faculty and asked if they could send me some reading recommendations. Over the summer between Year 12 and 13, I laid waste to my local library and its reading request forms! After a brief introduction to Sociology, Philosophy, Politics, Film Studies, and Literature, my brain was glowing with effort. I decided to pursue Education, because it combined ideas of social justice, sociology and literature, which have and always be vital to my character.
My degree trained my brain in a lot of different ways - particularly in recognising my own uniqueness.
In Education you have a lot of freedom to choose your own path of learning. And there were high expectations in all different fields, which were foisted upon us as undergraduates. For the first time I was pushed - not just to think, but to talk to people and professors I would previously have never had the confidence to address.
I think a lot of people from my background struggle to talk to people who we think are smarter than us, or more deserving of their places in certain spaces. Supervisions were great training for the world of work in that sense. It gave me a more thorough understanding of the way that our current systems work, and a sense of what problems need to be solved.
"Education is especially rewarding if you can bring a new perspective to lectures and supervisions - especially if you don't come from a background that traditionally attended Cambridge."
I also work in a very interdisciplinary way now.
I can consider lots of different problems at once and solve them in logical, measured ways. This is an example of how the skills students acquire through a Cambridge degree will help them as people beyond course content. My education has certainly opened doors for me in the employment sphere, sending me across the world. In a more informal regard, it's given me great social credit in my work with young people when I can tell them I did my undergraduate dissertation on video games!
After graduating from my Undergraduate degree in 2020 (an interesting year for obvious reasons), I completed a Masters in Children's Literature, as a Homerton Charter Scholar. Then, I worked as an Education Officer for a charity in East London between 2021 and 2023. For the past two years I've been working as a teacher in Tokyo, while volunteering as deputy head of the Amnesty International English-speaking network in Tokyo. We hold international film festivals, poetry events, and climate change workshops, among other things. Upon my return to the UK in September 2025 I will start a new role as Assistant Events Officer for The Learned Society of Wales - returning to champion Welsh talent in my home of Cymru.
I would recommend Education - and Cambridge - to anyone who would relish being pushed.
To anyone who wants to make friends from all around the world and therefore expand their own worldview in the process. Education is especially rewarding if you can bring a new perspective to lectures and supervisions - especially if you don't come from a background that traditionally attended Cambridge. This includes Free School Meals Students, Students in care, students with disabilities, students from any culture or background traditionally unrepresented. There is a place for you here because your experience makes the university better - and in return it will help you reach better, greater heights.
Education definitely did that for me.
