How to truly realise your full potential

I still find it awkward when people ask me what kind of career I want to follow after my degree. As yet, I don’t hold the exact answer to that question. However, I do feel that I’m on the right track, developing the right skills, and, if I keep my focus, I’ll most definitely end up loving my work.

When I first decided to leave my home country, Romania, and study in the UK, my only thought was that my lack of interest for any ‘highbrow’ subjects, such as Natural Sciences or Mathematics, wouldn’t get me very far.

So I thought that if I wanted to ‘stand a chance in life’, I’d better study at a top university, hoping that by the end of my studies I’d have some transferable skills that would allow me to get a ‘real grown-up job’ – these are the ideas that I’ve been instilled with for most of my life. That, and some other curious coincidences, was what brought me to the University of Glasgow, studying towards a Sociology/Digital Media and Information Studies joint degree.

I spent most of my first year adapting to the new environment. As soon as I obtained my permit to work in the UK, towards the end of the academic year, I started to look for a part-time job to support myself. My plan was to find an unpretentious workplace that would allow me to stay in Glasgow over the summer. What I ended up with was a Brand Ambassador position for an IT start-up from Australia, which actually proved to help me to a great extent in my future and also sparked my interest in marketing.  As I returned to Glasgow for my second year, I started the daunting process of applying for jobs once again.

I must have applied for about a hundred vacancies in two months, and probably 90% of those were waiting or casual jobs.

The rest were openings that I was really interested in, but for which I was pretty sure I was unqualified. But by keeping to my mantra, “fail harder”, which is actually about pushing boundaries and not being afraid of said failure, I decided to give them a go too.  The result? I got a single reply from those 90% of vacancies, four months after I had applied. By that time, I already had two part time jobs and an internship, all in areas that I’m genuinely interested in.

I have failed on some occasions, and been successful on others. But I do have the passion, the drive and the will to learn and to invest time and effort into every task. I still have to learn to engage and motivate people, and to overcome my desire to control every little detail and variable, but I’m getting there.

Overall, what I would like to say to every person looking for a job, be it a ‘real grown-up job’ or a casual part-time one, is that it is always worth aiming for what you really desire. Realising your potential goes two ways: acknowledging what you are good at, and making it happen.

Even if circumstances oblige you to temporarily settle for something that is not to the fullest of your potential, always remind yourself that it is only a temporary situation, and do not give up on what you yearn for.

Carmen Paputa Dutu was a student & Guest Coordinator at The University of Glasgow.