I had the honour of speaking about women’s education to 150 headteachers of all-girls schools and naturally it had me returning to my school experiences.
I attended a girls’ grammar school and was a pretty “middle of the road” kind of student, but often felt invisible in a system set up to push the wrong behaviours.
There was very little focus on embracing individual students’ passions.
A career “working outside with animals” didn’t fit into the grammar school mould, unless the ambition was veterinary.
But this wasn’t for me — exams weren’t my thing and I wasn’t academically driven, so immediately this made me take my foot off the pedal.#
I failed all my AS exams in sixth form and fudged my way through GCSEs, but A-levels are a big step up.
This coincided with the traumatic loss of a really important family member who nurtured my passion for animals, which had me switching off even more.
However, I switched my mindset and got my grades for university.
Fast forward 10 years, I’m someone who still refuses to be defined by exams, failures or society norms.
I’ve now got a BSc in animal behaviour, a successful farming business, I’m a Sunday Times bestselling author and, most importantly, I love my life.
You’re probably wondering where all this is going.
Well, young people will spend 40-50 years in a career they will either love or come to resent.
Society has to redefine what we determine as a successful career.
We need to focus less on what makes you more money and pride in so called “professional careers”.
You can only chase money and ego for so long before you realise it will never be enough.
When your career is based on your interests and love then you are far more likely to make this a success.
We must stop preaching which careers are deemed “most impressive”.
Take farming, for example; teachers and my university tutor told me that a career in farming would be “doing myself an injustice”, I was “better’ than that” and it was a man’s job.
To this day it blows my mind that my passion for outdoors and animals was declared as being “not impressive enough” and how an entire industry was dismissed.
This is one of our biggest battles as an industry. How do we open the doors for young people to understand that farming can be for anyone?
How do we encourage our educational system to not only push farming as a viable career but shift to focus on nurturing passions and motivations?
I honestly believe we have lost and continue to lose many amazing individuals because of the influence of our educational system.
It needs rewriting, as does our definition of success.
