Information for secondary students and school leavers
Gap year work experience helped William Arlidge decide on a degree
William Arlidge had wanted to study marine biology at university since he was five years old. “I was just always fascinated with underwater life. When I was really young I wanted to be like Jacques Cousteau, and I wanted to go to the bottom of the Mariana Trench or be the first person to film the giant squid. That’s the sort of stuff I wanted to do.”
But William's plans changed when he became disillusioned with secondary school in his Seventh Form year. “The work I was doing wasn't grabbing my attention. The biology classes were good but the other classes I couldn't focus on properly. In the end I went off with my dad on a trip to India halfway through the year and I sort of gave up on school work. I only just got University Entrance.”
Not ready to start further study, William took a full-time job sorting medical samples, which he soon realised wasn’t for him. “It was horrible – the full-time work in an entry-level position. It was tedious, monotonous work and I started disliking it after two or three weeks. I think I lasted five months, and then I quit and decided I was going to go to uni.”
William says his work experience motivated him to work a lot harder once he started university.
“I saw the difference when I looked at my classmates in first year. I got really good grades. I sat down and did all my homework while everyone else was slacking off. Everyone else was failing and getting C’s, and dropping out of courses, and I was thinking ‘What are you guys doing?’
"That was because I felt like I’d seen what entry-level work could be like. I didn’t want to go back and do that, so I really had to do well.”
