I’ve finally decided it’s time to come out. No, I’m neither gay nor an alcoholic, but ever since I moved to this country, I’ve been festering a little secret. If it comes up in conversation, I usually change the subject. It’s not something I’m proud of, yet I’ve decided it’s time to stop feeling ashamed.
I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy several careers in my life, on both sides of the pond. I’m foremost a journalist, but I also spent around 10 years as a special needs teaching assistant. The position I gave up before coming here was a lecturer at a British university where I taught English as a Foreign Language study skills to overseas students. So, what’s my secret? I accomplished all this without a college degree.
Americans are justly proud of their education. To them the college they attended seems just as important as their family heritage. Its so ingrained in them that it’s a common subject to bring up when they’re getting to know someone new. Even though the debt involved to go to such an establishment might be crippling, it all seems worth it so they can talk about their alma mater. Having a degree (or multiple degrees in this part of the world) is proof of both intelligence and ability. Surely everyone over the age of 22 has at least one, right? How could you possibly expect to gain meaningful employment without one?
The fact that British and American English is different helped me to cover up the truth. What you call college, we call university. So if someone asks if I went to college for journalism I just say “yes.” I don’t even cross my fingers behind my back because it isn’t actually a lie.
If you were to train in journalism in England today, you would be wise to take a university course that would give you a degree. But things were very different back in the 1970s when I left high school. Unlike a lot of kids today, I was always super focused on what I wanted to do with my life. You have to be, because otherwise how can you make it happen?
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Writing (alongside talking at the back of the class) was what set me apart from many of my peers. So my mother and I investigated what I needed to do to land my dream job as a newspaper reporter. Mum, who trained as a secretary, said the best thing I could do was go to a college (a level between high school and university) to learn shorthand and typing. I think she thought it would be something I could fall back on, but I thought it would give me two of the essential practical skills that would help me produce stories more efficiently.
Further investigation led me to a yearlong course run by the National Council for the Training of Journalists. So, after completing my secretarial year I headed off to their technical college where I learned the basic reporting skills I needed.
When the course was completed, I had no problem landing a job on a newspaper in a London suburb because I didn’t need to compete with those with degrees. It simply wasn’t a big deal in journalism at that time.
Not having a degree was never a problem for me. If it had been I would have studied later on. But the other paths I followed also didn’t require one. A certificate in teaching EFL landed me the job at the university because I wasn’t teaching a degree course, I was merely teaching my classes study skills.
On the very few occasions I have confessed my secret to friends here, the looks I’ve received have been a mixture of shock and pity. Honestly, you’d have thought I’d admitted that I couldn’t swim they were so surprised. (I guess that’s another column). In case you’re wondering, I’ve never told a prospective employer I have a degree, nor lied to anyone that I have. It’s just when you’re a writer, it’s pretty easy to come up with creative ways around it.
I’m not, in case you’re wondering, suggesting for one minute that people shouldn’t take as many degrees as they like. These days its essential for most kind of jobs and if you can afford it, why not challenge yourself to see how far up the educational ladder you can climb? I also realize that I could stop all this nonsense if I took one now, but personally I prefer to use my skills (and my money) elsewhere.
The good thing is even though I didn’t attend a three-year university course, I did have a fun year away on my journalism course. I made some “lifelong” friends I never saw again afterwards and never drank so much in my life (still not an alcoholic).
I’d like to share my “wisdom” with today’s teens and say don’t take a degree if you can get work without it, but this wouldn’t be true. I’m literally in a different world in a different time where these things matter, but please don’t use today’s standards to judge me.
Hilary Decent is a freelance journalist who moved from England to Naperville in 2007.