Uptree

Aisha decided to do a gap year after finishing sixth form and her A-levels.

“I was thinking about it for a while but this was something that I never thought I would do but I’m very much glad that I made the decision to do it. At the sixth form that I went to and my experience with careers, there wasn’t a lot of exposure to work experience and the careers that I’m interested in… I’m doing my gap year this year and I’m just trying to get a lot more work experience in law and also other areas to kind of narrow down my choices. I’ve gone from science and medicine to literature and law so there is a lot of variation there.

I have applied to university to study International Law and Globalisation at the University of Birmingham for deferred entry… this year I am taking the time to apply to apprenticeships. I’ve been doing a lot of research around them and I think they are a very sure-fire way of getting right into the nitty-gritty of working in law for example. It’s becoming a more popular route that people are going down and when I first heard about it, it was just like ‘yeah that sounds amazing’. I’m also going to be working as a tutor this year.

Both university and apprenticeships were appealing to me. I’m still very much between them but I was just like ‘I’m gonna kick myself if I don’t even apply for the apprenticeships’. So I’m at least going to try and the experiences I will get from anything that I do is going to be a useful experience anyway so none of it is going to be a waste in my eyes.”

She attended an event in Manchester, despite living in Birmingham and made connections with a Solicitor Apprentice who pointed her in the direction of Uptree.

“I followed her on Tiktok and her LinkedIn. She was answering people’s questions and she was like ‘if you want to get work experience, I used Uptree, I used all of these sites’. So then I went on Uptree, made an account and just looked for ones in Birmingham and near areas that I could go to.”

Uptree had a massive impact on Aisha’s career choices, she was able to attend Insight Days and Work Experience Days with our Employer Partners which were her first experiences of law firms and being around legal professionals.

“Uptree was just a great way of exposing me to these things. Like I said before, I struggled so much finding work experience just because I didn’t have a great support network in my school and at home. I'm first gen to go to uni, first gen to do A-levels, my dad’s an immigrant so he doesn’t really know about this education system. My mum as well, she is from here but she hasn’t gone down the traditional education route or the law route. So I definitely have had times where I am like ‘oh my gosh I’ve missed the deadline for all of these things, where am I gonna find these things that I’m actually interested in’. I want to learn more about law.

Something I have learnt about law as well is that when you study it, it is very different to practising it. It’s what I have heard from a lot of people. Having the opportunity from Uptree to get into these spaces, I saw how an actual working life will be, because I could study law as I am very interested in the academics of it. I could study it for a really long time but not actually enjoy practising it. That’s what I really wanted to narrow down. Would I actually like working in this job? Uptree was able to narrow down and give me the platform and opportunity to do that. I would definitely recommend it and I’ve been recommending it to people who are in year 12 or year 11 who are interested in finding out about different work experiences. I remember I had no idea about these platforms so I would literally be emailing directly and calling places to let me shadow them for a week or something. There was very little success with that. They would just ignore me or it was past the times that they were taking students in. Uptree was literally my saving grace really.”

Year 12, for many students, requires a large shift in mindset and is a big point of uncertainty for a lot of people. Aisha’s advice is to explore and find out what career you want to do.

“You literally have the whole world to explore. If you are someone like me, I chose quite varied A-levels as well because I had my strengths in essay subjects and English was always my favourite subject but I also still loved science and studying that.

I would say, explore as many things as you can and listen to advice from people who have actually done things because I remember I would get deterred from things by friends or teachers who don’t know the industries that I was interested in and that would kind of stop me from going into it.

She advises other young people to get out there and talk to people, even if it is scary at first and always be resilient.

“I literally have been to Manchester, London, Oxford just so I could talk to people because I know coming from first gen to go to uni, low socio-economic background, muslim background as well, immigrant father, you literally have all of these things stopping you from getting into it and you just have to be willing to do stuff that other people are not, you have to be willing to go to these events and talk to people. I would always say to myself at these events, ‘I spent £20 on my train ticket, I woke up really early, I’ve gone to this place, just to not talk to people? You have to talk to people now!’ That's what I would say to myself.