Dropping out of university to do an apprenticeship at Economy was the best decision I ever made.
For the past year, I’ve been Economy’s social media producer. I’m a digital marketing apprentice, and this is my first official position. Here’s how I got here.
I studied mathematics at the University of Southampton, for a bit — but I quickly discovered that it wasn’t really something I wanted to focus on from a career perspective. Instead, I decided I wanted to do something creative, and then I found it: digital marketing apprenticeships.
Apprenticeships are often looked down upon by students. There’s a lot of stigma revolving around it. But I decided to take a chance anyway (spoiler alert: best decision I’ve ever made).
Despite the stigma of being an apprentice, there was still a lot of competition. Rounds after rounds of applications later, I finally got through, beating hundreds of students to an interview with Economy.
Time to find out what Economy is, I thought. I did a bit of online stalking… and panicked. “A charity campaigning to change the way people feel about economics and to make it more understandable.” Economics… graphs, numbers — I dropped out of university to do exactly the same thing?
Luckily, the interview process proved me wrong. It turns out economics isn’t just maths and graphs – it’s a lot simpler, in some ways, and a lot more complex in others. I wanted to find out more.
A couple of interviews later, I found myself in the job, with a brand new title: Social Media Producer. As I walked in on my first day, I was greeted by a friendly bunch of co-workers, and dove straight into the challenge. The more I learnt about the organisation, the more I realised — I knew absolutely nothing about economics and the economy.
Turns out, I wasn’t alone. In 2016, Economy ran a poll with YouGov asking the UK public if they felt “politicians and the media talk about economics in a way that is accessible and easy to understand”.
Only 12% answered yes.
Throughout my life I didn’t really think about the economy and how it affects my life. During my time here I started to realise knowing a little about economics can change the way I live, and that the choices I make actually affect the economy (YES — the WHOLE economy).
I know, I know… mind-blowing, right? So what have I done in my time here to bring that same realisation to the 88% of people who don’t feel like economics is easy to understand?
When I first started, I was pushing our editorial team’s content onto social media. Pretty soon I got involved in setting the social media strategy itself, brainstorming what our target audience would want (which was pretty easy for me to do, given people like me — us 88%-ers — are the target audience.)
Once I understood a bit more about economics, I started creating content myself, specifically for social media: funny memes, quote cards, videos and infographics. I’ve been in front of the camera teaching a little bit about economics for our Economy Explains series on YouTube.
After testing a few different types of content, we started focusing on the ones we thought worked best. We created a new series, called What You Need To Know — a simple video for a social media audience giving them the key info on economics news.
There we have it! I dropped out of university to do something I love, creating content and being paid. It’s been about a year now, and my apprenticeship has come to an end — who knows what I’ll do next…
