Burnley – At just 21, a young woman from the local Asian community finds herself questioning everything she sacrificed after choosing a path few around her supported.
She made an uncommon choice when she enrolled in a Journalism degree—an area often dismissed within her community as unstable and risky. “People around me didn’t get it,” she says. “They asked why I wouldn’t do something more practical—law, pharmacy, teaching—something ‘secure’.”
But she stayed firm, driven by a love for storytelling and a deep desire to represent unheard voices. She spent three years chasing stories, writing through the night, and carrying cameras heavier than herself across towns and cities. She believed that with hard work, the opportunities would come.
They didn’t.
After graduating with a BA (Hons) in Journalism, she applied everywhere: local newsrooms, online platforms, PR agencies, production companies. Not a single interview. “No callbacks, no emails, not even a rejection message from most places,” she recalls. “It felt like I’d been erased.”
Today, she works at a local coffee shop—serving flat whites instead of reporting on real lives. It’s honest work, but far from the future she imagined.
“There’s nothing wrong with working in hospitality,” she says, “but I didn’t go through all that stress and pressure just to pour coffee. I gave everything to journalism—time, money, mental health—and now I have nothing to show for it.”
She says the hardest part isn’t even the job hunt—it’s facing the community that doubted her to begin with. “Now they look at me and say, ‘We told you so.’ That’s the part that hurts the most.”
Her story is a quiet but powerful reminder of how passion, determination, and creativity can be undermined—not only by an unforgiving industry, but by cultural expectations that still shape the choices of many young people today.
Despite the setbacks, she hasn’t lost hope. “Maybe I just need to find my own way in. Maybe I’ll build something myself one day. But right now, I’m just trying to survive.”