When it comes to employability after university, I’d say my geography course definitely awards you with some skills essential for the real world outside university life, and in the working realm.

Time management for one (although I feel as if this applies to most university courses if I’m honest), figuring out how to find the right balance between work, play, study, and relaxing is one of the most important skills you can have, and is essential for producing good quality work whilst not losing your mind (entirely). With that said, a signature component of this is being able to prioritise what’s important in different contexts, a very desirable skill that requires you to analyse and adjust to the appropriate environment, much like in geography itself.

Another skill (again most probably covered by all university courses), is knowing how to work well under pressure. You’ll be surprised how efficiently you can work when you know there’s much to be completed in very little time. This is something I have mastered, however I am yet to perfect the art of operating at this efficiency level at all times (it’s a working progress).

Having read so many articles that argue conflicting arguments, my course has encouraged me to become more critical, and not take everything I see at face value, doing your due diligence and looking properly into where you are getting your information, is a critical key for producing good credible work.

With geography being such a broad topic, you are exposed to a variety of action taking place in the world, different perspectives and different elements of the physical and human environments within our planet. This offers the opportunity to explore whatever it is you find interesting, and it is that freedom that if you are lucky allows you to make a decision on the career path you want to take post-university. Although the topic itself wasn’t extensively covered in my course, sustainability and renewable energies are where my passions lie, which has made the search for graduate jobs easier, as I actually have an idea of what I am looking for.

Obtaining a degree is not solely about what you learn in class and getting the grade at the end of the 3 years (although very important), is also about what you expose yourself to. and opportunities that are there to be taken advantage of. For instance, my course has the option of study abroad for a term or a year, and is a chance to experience a new culture, network and also gives you that extra edge that makes you a bit more intriguing. Once you graduate there will be at least 100 more people who have all studied the same as you, however the experiences you expose yourself to is what will make you more attractive to employers. Geography as a course itself challenges you to make new interactions which in turn helps you grow and become more than your qualification.