As she enters the fourth and final year of her degree apprenticeship, Ella shares how she’s feeling about the year ahead — her last one splitting time between working with us and studying at Manchester Met:
Three years have flown by, and now I face my final year… I have a feeling this one won’t feel like it is flying by!
When I last asked Pat and Madi for advice (at the start of my first year) they gave me lots to keep in mind including “when it comes to Ian and Mike, definitely listen if they mention anything they like or are interested in and agree on it!” at the time I didn’t understand the significance of this, but believe me I do now.
At this point I am conflicted about my fourth year. On one hand I have no idea how I am going to stay sane, and on the other I know that by June next year I’ll be done (only 10 months, how hard can it be?).
I think the truth is, to stay sane I am going to have to plan, plan, plan, to make sure I can fit everything in that I have to do plus all the things I want to do (which is always a lot). Let me show you what I mean…
Obviously there is also Christmas shopping, Bonfire Night, New Year’s Eve, a cheeky city break, and many camping trips I’d like to go on next spring which I can’t even face adding to that little visual of my mind.
To give myself a head start, I asked my seniors for advice.
Starting with the highlights, I was eager to hear about their best moments. Madi’s peak was finishing her User Interface unit – a deeply stressful experience that ended up being immensely satisfying once she was finally done with it. Pat loved his AI unit, but his absolute peak was receiving the email that officially declared he was done with uni altogether. On the flip side, the lowest points were all about the pressure of being put on the spot. For Madi, the pit was presenting her progress to everyone during sprint reviews, which she found incredibly daunting. Pat’s pit was the endless anticipation of the End Point Assessment (EPA), though he admitted it wasn’t actually as bad as his Tuesdays (which were his dedicated, gruelling project days).
When I asked how on earth they managed to balance everything, their strategies couldn’t have been more different. Madi relied on setting tight deadlines for herself to stay on track, whereas Pat went down the extreme route: 16-hour days, completely cutting out a life outside of work, and hitting the gym at 10pm.
Hindsight is 20/20, so I wanted to know what they would do differently if they could turn back time. Madi admitted that making plans too early ended up being a wasted effort because everything changed anyway. Pat’s advice was all about pacing – he wishes he had started earlier and broken tasks down into much smaller, manageable chunks.
The learning curves hit them both in unique ways. Madi had to get to grips with critical writing – specifically exploring alternatives and comparing them properly-alongside learning to actually listen to her supervisor. She also had a massive breakthrough with presentations; she used to write entire scripts, but when it came to her EPA, she decided to just wing it – and it went brilliantly. Pat had a lightbulb moment when he realised the key was doing the project work and writing up that specific part of the report in parallel, rather than treating them as separate hurdles.
When it came to ranking the core components of the year, they actually agreed on the toughest part. Both Madi and Pat found the project to be the hardest element by far. Finding the fun was a bit more subjective: Madi enjoyed the EPA the most, while Pat found the project itself to be the most fun.
Finally, the most important part of all of this is graduation. I am notorious for never having anything to wear. I think I’ve ordered more than 50 Club L London dresses in the past year alone – having sent 99.9% of them back and ending up with just three – so you can probably guess how extremely picky I am. Beyond the outfit crisis, the fear of tripping on that very long, well-lit, and incredibly slippy-looking stage is downright terrifying to me.
I naturally had to ask Madi and Pat how they handled the wardrobe and the stage fright. When it came to outfits, Madi snapped hers up on Vinted – the very first sparkly thing she saw – inspired by someone wearing sequins at Jess’ graduation. Pat kept it classic and got his suit from Next. As for the walk across the stage, neither was particularly worried about falling flat on their face on the stage itself: Madi was mostly distracted, assuming she wouldn’t even be able to see the audience once up there (and secretly worrying she’d get told off for having pins in her gown); Pat was convinced he’d either trip going up the steps or catch his gown on his feet and take a dive.
Looking at all their advice, starting early seems like the absolute key to surviving this – though knowing me, I could easily do a complete 180 like Madi. Either way, the plan is to actually enjoy my final module (Sustainability and Innovation) and get some self-inflicted deadlines sorted ASAP. I suppose I could also take inspiration from Pat’s 16-hour days for a humorous uno reverse moment (if you know, you know!).
Beyond the grand survival strategy, I think it’s really about looking forward to the little things. Right now, I’m genuinely just looking forward to meeting my project supervisor!
To keep my sanity intact, I’m planning to rely heavily on time blocking. For example, if Monday is my dedicated uni workday, then Monday evening is strictly off-limits for anything work-or uni-related. On work-from-home days, I’m aiming to dedicate one evening a week to my report, portfolio, or EPA prep – rotating through them (though honestly, ahhh, how many days are there in a single week?!). The ideal mindset is a solid few hours of progress followed by dinner (preferably made for me) and a trip to the gym or some other form of ‘self-care’.
I’d like to think I can keep my weekends completely uni-free, though I have a feeling that dream might be short-lived. My main point is that routine and consistent small steps forward every week are what I’m banking on. That’s how I plan to still hit my daily step count, cook occasionally, and get to the gym – along with having the occasional day officially marked in the calendar as a designated ‘DO NOTHING DAY’.
I’m sure future Ella will either be incredibly dramatic or far too burnt out to waste energy on the theatrics, so either way, you’ll all know how my year is going. And to future me, who is definitely reading this back in less than a year’s time thinking, “Wow, I was so aspirational, and now I have to write an article about how this year ACTUALLY went” – listen, I am younger and more naive than you right now, okay? Cut me a break!
We wish Ella all the best for the last year of her degree, we’re sure she’ll smash it in the same way the others have. If you’re interested to know more about degree apprenticeships check out these previous EPIX articles:
Approaching the end of my degree apprenticeship (retrospective and thoughts about the future)
