Throwing it back to May 2016, when I was awaiting my Nursing application to change to a conditional offer on my UCAS page … which never came. Instead, I was greeted with the lovely sight of all 5 of my nursing applications being rejected following my interview. I knew that nursing was a very hard course to get into and was told to prepare for not getting in on the first year and having to wait till the next year to reapply. However, once I was rejected, I could feel that that was not the path for me at that time in my life. I was not ready for the commitment that a nursing course requires, and decided that maybe sometime later in my life, if I still wanted, I could always go back and do a nursing degree, but now was not the time.
So when results day came (which was on my birthday I must add), and I seen that I got the results I would have need for the nursing course, it was a bitter sweet moment.
However, I had just recently discovered that a girl from my town had a blog, which I started to read and realised that she was blogging about the course she was doing at university in Liverpool, which was a PR related course. I was so fascinated with her blogs and began to get very interested in the topics she was talking about. So this was my first introduction to the world of PR, and I was heavily interested in it. I began to look up similar courses in universities at home as I did not want to go away for uni, and I found the Communication Management and Public Relations course at Ulster University. However, I hadn’t applied for this course within my first 5 choices, so I was stuck on what to do now.
I had the results necessary to get in to this course, so on results day I thought I would have a look at the ‘clearing’ option on UCAS. But unfortunately for me, this course was not on clearing. But I wasn’t giving up that fast! I rang the course director and basically begged for a place.
I had to wait a few days to find out if I was going to be offered a place on the course…these days were the longest, most stressful days ever. But finally I got the notification offering me a place on the course, to which I confirmed.
I am now in final year and I can definitely say that I made the right choice for my career. I am so happy that I picked this course, I have been so interested in the topics I have been studying over the years and can see how this career path will be suited to me.
Siobhan McKerr is a final year BSc in Communication Management & Public Relations student at Ulster University. She can be found on: Twitter – @Siobhan_mckerr, LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/siobhan-mckerr and Instagram: @Siobhan_mckerr.