If you had asked me in my last year of college how ready I was for the creative industries, I would have said: absolutely ready. With my top-notch degree and beautiful portfolio, I felt invulnerable.
However, when you get your first job, you’re in for a shock. It’s not that you don’t have talent – it’s just that the game is different. You are no longer designing for grades; You’re building something that has to survive in the wild, which is both exciting and humbling.
Now, I’m somewhere between a wide-eyed student and a fully formed creative prophet, still learning how to hold my own in a room and figuring out when to fight the line and when to let go. People talk about the gap after graduation actually being a huge opportunity for growth as you move from “student ideas” back to “job ideas”.
reality gap
College teaches you how to create beautiful things, but work teaches you why they exist in the first place.
In college, briefings are a playground because you’re designing for an audience that wants to see your ideas, references, and craftsmanship. In the real world, you’re designing for a business that has goals, shareholders, and a CMO. The difference between the two situations is context.
A beautiful deck proves you can plan, but business thinking proves you understand the consequences. In other words, you can have the most beautiful product portfolio in the room, but if you can’t explain how your idea builds brand awareness, changes perception, or survives purchases, then it’s just going to resonate.
We were trained to be obsessed with kerning and case studies. We’re not always trained to ask, “Does this really work in the world?”
I remember my first real client presentation (which I rehearsed heavily) – and then the questions came. Not “Tell me more about your inspiration,” but “Why did you choose this route?” “What problem does it solve?” “Is this right for us?”
It was at that moment that I realized that speaking is all about thinking on your feet. If you don’t believe in your work, how can you expect others—especially clients—to believe in it too?
The first piece of unfiltered feedback may sting, but eventually it sharpens your creative instincts. It’s important to remember that feedback is not about protecting your ego. It exists to make work stronger, so the worst thing you can do is treat your ideas like they’re fragile. Share it early and let people find the bugs. That’s how something goes from “good” to “what do you think?”
In college, you don’t see these internal debates and rewrites and strategic pivots, or sometimes the bravest move is to strip away an idea rather than sugarcoat it. None of this makes it a glossy portfolio spread.
An Honest Point: Compensation, Stress, and Sense of Belonging
There are expenses we don’t always talk about, like the return train ticket into town for your interview, and the coffee you’re supposed to drink. Before you get a character, you’ve invested money just to get into the room.
In a city like London, where entry-level salaries are stretched thin, cost of living becomes a filter. If you can’t afford to do a small amount of (or unpaid) work for the time being, the door will narrow and your entry will be limited.
Unpaid internships, in particular, widen this gap. They are positioned as a stepping stone, but for many they are simply not financially viable, which determines who stays in the industry long enough to build a career.
There are also the more “invisible” parts, like imposter syndrome of not seeing yourself reflected in the room, and the confidence gap that creeps in when you don’t have family, friends or an inherited network to fall back on in an institution. Especially for young women, a lack of intimacy can make you question yourself, even if you’ve earned your seat.
These barriers may be subtle, but they are structural and we must acknowledge them if we are serious about expanding the industry.
What can you learn in 20 days?
Yes, college gives you the craft, but twenty days in an agency gives you the background.
Programs like 20(S) Exchange are not designed to receive praise; They are stress-tests of your ideas through real feedback and portfolio reviews that ask harder questions.
You’ll soon realize that a beautiful deck is not the same thing as a commercially astute idea, and that budget, timeline, clients, and strategy must be part of the creative equation. You’ll see how ideas can overcome limitations and be flexible without losing their core. You start learning things that aren’t really taught in class, like how to speak to a room without flinching, how to build on other people’s ideas, and how to take notes and improve work instead of defending it.
Most importantly, you will feel like you belong to a team. Not as an “intern” or “student”, but as a real person with ideas.
If we want better pipelines, we need better layouts, and ticking those boxes isn’t that complicated. Placements should provide real-time feedback, expose junior employees to real customer conversations, and demonstrate their confidence-building potential. Perhaps most importantly, they should invite people they don’t know to join and pay them a decent wage.
Sometimes the difference between staying in the industry or leaving it is whether they feel they belong.
beyond panel
I love seeing women in leadership positions because I truly believe representation at the top changes culture, but if we only celebrate women who are already successful, we ignore the bottleneck in the middle.
While the group discussions were encouraging, the visits were transformative. It’s powerful to see someone with whom you are truly connected—not just at the finish line of a decades-long career, but also several steps ahead of you. It can feel pretty distant when every International Women’s Day lineup consists of CEOs and founders. Ambitious, yes. Is it possible? Sometimes not.
The impact would be even greater if a studio traded a glossy IWD panel for a paid early-career placement.
Redesign the doorway
There is no shortage of talented young women in the industry. Walk into any graduate show and you’ll see this immediately. The idea is there, the ambition is there, and the grafting is definitely there. What’s missing is the bridge between college and studio, between potential and opportunity, between being interested in the industry and actually getting into it.
Early access shouldn’t depend on luck. If we want a fairer creative industry, we can’t just celebrate women who are making breakthroughs. We had to redesign the doorway itself. I’ll say it again: Talent is not the issue, access is the issue – and it’s a problem we can actually solve.
