19 minute read
Creating a career
‘What shall I do when I graduate?’ The thought is never far from students’ minds. We spoke to a current second-year undergraduate to discover his thoughts about future careers and which path to choose. We then posed some of the burning questions to Mansfield alumni working in the creative industries.
John Whittingdale (Geography, 2023)
A year into my studies at Mansfield, I feel poised to reflect on my achievements thus far and look ahead to impending adventures. As a second-year Geography student, I take pride in my academic accomplishments, yet I’ve also learned that being a student at Mansfield pushes you beyond what you can achieve within your course.
Not only have I found community in places I expected, such as the Mansfield-Merton Football Team, which I’m excited to captain this coming year, but I’ve also explored my creative side through my love of art, literature, and culture.
Beyond the College, I’ve taken on committee roles in societies such as the Oxford Poetry Society, which I’m sure will introduce me to a cast of wonderful and eccentric people. Within Mansfield, I’m proud to serve as Editor of the Virtual Quad: the weekly newsletter for students. Suffice to say, I feel I have found a community at Mansfield that pushes me to enrich myself.
As I explore new opportunities here at Oxford, I am sure I’m not the only one of my peers who’s begun to think about future careers. As a Geographer, it is tempting to feel I must streamline my focus to traditional paths for Geography graduates. However, I’ve realised that there are no constraints to the path I can pursue after University. It’s crucial for us aspiring students to see what Mansfield alumni have achieved, motivating us to set high goals and recognise our potential. By learning about what other Mansfield alumni have gone on to accomplish in their professional lives since graduating, and how their time at Mansfield shaped their journeys, we hope future generations of Mansfield students can follow in their footsteps.
Rishi Dastidar (History, 1996)
What is your current role?
I have parallel careers in copywriting and branding, and poetry. Four days a week I am a writer for brands, sometimes directly, but a lot of the time through advertising and design agencies. Over the years I’ve written for clients including Sky, O2, EDF Energy and CoppaFeel! The rest of the time I try and do the poetry stuff, and everything else that comes with a career in literature.
How does a typical day unfold for you?
There’s not much that is typical about any given day for me, but one thing common to most of them is that it will generally start with some sort of blank page, and by the end of that day there will be some form of mark on that page. Nearly all my days revolve around writing, and I need to be responsive to what needs to be created at any given moment.
What’s the most enjoyable part of your job?
There’s a lot of things to enjoy from the range of what I do. I think, ultimately, this is what draws a lot of people to creative careers: a sense of play, having the privilege and pleasure of making things, knowing you can provoke a reaction in people. And if you’re lucky, you get paid to do it.
What’s the most challenging part of your job?
There can be pressure on the commercial side of things –hard and fast targets that aren’t always easy to meet. With poetry, there’s always work going on in the background. The best artists are restless about what they’re trying to articulate through their way of working. You’ve got to stretch and develop to get there. It’s challenging – but it’s a good challenge.
How did you get to where you are now?
There was no grand plan. I knew I wanted to write from about the age of 14, but 2007 was when I got my first job in a creative agency as a copywriter and discovered contemporary poetry as well. Since then, it’s been a case of saying yes to as many opportunities that I can, engineering those as well. I’m fortunate in terms of having the time, energy, and health to pursue a lot of these where others might not have. So, there is luck involved. But people manage to stay in creative careers when there’s an openness to trying something new.
Do you have any stand-out memories of your time at Mansfield that may or may not have influenced where you are now?
There’s not one stand-out moment, per se. It’s more that, across the three years, Mansfield felt like home. Coming from a comprehensive school that didn’t have a great record of sending people to university, finding a place where I fitted mattered a lot. Mansfield was an oasis of relative normality in a place that is often not very normal. I got the best of both worlds, benefiting from an Oxford education but in a context where I was surrounded by nice, down-to-earth people.
What’s a professional or personal achievement you are proud of?
I still think back to a reading I did of the title poem of my first book Ticker Tape, in Berlin back in 2018. Afterwards I had gone to the bar, carrying the printout of my poem which I had read from. The bartender was in tears, and asked if I would sign the printout for him to keep. I have no idea how that happened. But the fact that those 220 lines moved someone, who I’d never met before, to tears; that remains a standout moment for me.
How do you like to spend your free time?
There’re not many days that I’m not doing some form of writing. I do like my American sport, and that’s where a lot of my emotional energy gets spent. I have become a big Philadelphia Phillies fan – that really exploded during lockdown, and long may it continue. Go Phils!
Do you have any life tips for our current students?
Say yes, as much as you can – that ‘yes’ might be the start of a new adventure, who knows? I’ve generally found that if you assume good things will happen, good things come back to you.
Ruth Alexander (English, 1997)
What is your current role?
I present The Food Chain on the BBC World Service (bbc.com/foodchain).
How does a typical day unfold for you?
The production week runs Tuesday to Monday. On Tuesday morning, I read briefs to prepare for interviews and will then conduct interviews in the afternoon and through Wednesday – this may be down the line or in person on location. On Thursday, the producer and I work out the programme structure and start to cut down the taped interviews, then on Friday, I script the programme. Come Monday, I put the finishing touches to the script, record it, and then start preparing for the next programme.
What’s the most enjoyable part of your job?
I love talking to people about what they do and why they do it, and finding out about the historical, cultural, political and social significance of food. And then I love figuring out how to turn everything I’ve learned into a story.
What’s the most challenging part of your job?
When I first started making radio programmes, a senior producer told me the job was to ‘tell a simple story well’. It’s great advice and almost every week it remains a challenge to condense a complicated, multi-faceted subject or issue into a straightforward and compelling narrative.
How did you get to where you are now?
My first job was as a reporter on Investment Week, a magazine for Independent Financial Advisers. I then did a postgraduate diploma in Broadcast Journalism at Cardiff University, funded by a bursary from ITN. After that, I got work experience in BBC local radio, which quickly turned into a short-term contract writing Ceefax news (the precursor to the BBC News website) and freelance radio shifts. I then spent four years as a journalist at Radio Stoke, where I also worked as a video journalist, before joining the BBC’s Radio Current Affairs department as a producer/ reporter. There I worked for 15 years on a wide variety of programmes like More or Less, Money Box and Crossing Continents on Radio 4, The Inquiry on BBC World Service and various other series and documentaries. I then saw an advert for The Food Chain job, and thought it sounded interesting – and it is!
Do you have any stand-out memories of your time at Mansfield that may or may not have influenced where you are now?
At the end of my first term my tutors, Ros Ballaster and Lucinda Rumsey, told me to keep asking questions – they said no one else in the room knows the answer either, but they don’t want to ask. So, I remain unafraid to ask a basic question – in fact, they’re often the best.
What’s a professional or personal achievement you are proud of?
My work has taken me to a number of countries – Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, France, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Uganda, USA – where I’ve had the privilege of finding out about people’s lives and businesses, and I have found that just fascinating.
How do you like to spend your free time?
I spend it with my little boy, in playgrounds, in the garden –we keep it simple.
Do you have any life tips for our current students?
I remember feeling very anxious about what job I was going to do when my finals were over – not least because people kept asking me and I didn’t know. So, follow your heart: do what you’re interested in; don’t feel you need to have it all mapped out, and that way you’ll naturally find a career path you find enjoyable and fulfilling
Ashish Ravinran (History, 2009)
What is your current role?
I’m an independent filmmaker based in New York City. My work spans both fiction and documentary. I recently completed the Warner Bros TV Writers’ Workshop in LA, which is a pipeline programme to write on TV shows that the studio produces. I also work as an editor and have edited multiple documentaries, most recently Queenmaker on Hulu (Disney+ in the UK).
How does a typical day unfold for you?
When I’m hired to edit a project, I’m often working with a team during regular work hours. But when I’m working on my own projects, it involves sitting in the writing posture during both regular and highly irregular hours. This past year I’ve also been finishing a feature documentary I directed. It’s called Chasing Cricket and it’s about immigrant teens who will do anything to pursue cricket in the US, including playing in an annual youth tournament organised by, of all people, the New York Police Department.
What’s the most enjoyable part of your job?
The unpredictability. Every project is a new world to discover and explore, which appeals to the former history student in me. I never quite know what I’m going to find out. Like when I discovered that the CIA made a fake sex tape in the 1950s to try and depose the Indonesian president, Sukarno – which inspired a short film I made.
What’s the most challenging part of your job?
Again, the unpredictability. In my documentary, one of the coaches references the adage that ‘cricket is a game of glorious uncertainty’, which could apply to the film industry too – with all its mergers, acquisitions, strikes and cuts. Depending on who you ask, it feels like there’s talk of both end-times and boom-times at somehow exactly the same time.
How did you get to where you are now?
I realised I wanted to get into filmmaking, strangely enough, while doing two years of compulsory military service in Singapore. I then went to Mansfield where I started making short films and roped in people at College and at the Oxford University Film Foundation (OUFF). After graduating, I did a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Filmmaking at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and I’ve been working in the film world since. By the way, the short films I made at Mansfield were naturally all masterpieces but will only be seen posthumously.
Do you have any stand-out memories of your time at Mansfield that may or may not have influenced where you are now?
Plenty! Reading History taught me a lot about narrative and storytelling. I sometimes think of myself as a wannabe historian in disguise as a filmmaker. Mansfield was a very supportive, open place for me to make films. But once, right before I finished third year, I got in trouble for filming late at night outside the College gates without permission – during exam season! I argued that we were making far less noise than people who were stumbling home drunkenly from clubs. It didn’t work. I got fined £30, which now seems like a pretty reasonable location fee!
What’s a professional or personal achievement you are proud of?
I mentor fifth graders in a screenwriting programme where I help them write a short script, which actors then perform live. It’s thrilling to watch them watching their stories come to life, and I’m frequently jealous of their wild ideas. I’ve also taught editing to NYU graduate film students, and I spent a few days as an editing tutor to Danny DeVito.
How do you like to spend your free time?
During Covid, I rediscovered some neglected hobbies like doing card tricks and playing the guitar. In fact, my wife and I started doing song covers with personalised lyrics as birthday presents. My cricket career ended after a brief stint for Merton-Mansfield, but cricket has been having a moment in the US and I am ready and willing to watch.
Do you have any life tips for our current students?
Laugh at yourself.
Nastassia Dhanraj (Theology, 2012)
What is your current role?
I am a comedy writer working in TV and radio.
How does a typical day unfold for you?
It varies, depending on if I’m in a writers’ room or not. In a writers’ room, I’ll spend the day with other writers, punching out jokes, shaping stories and developing characters. If I’m not in a writers’ room, I’ll spend the day in my office, punching out jokes, shaping stories and developing characters – but it’ll be weirder when I speak out loud because there’s nobody else there.
What’s the most enjoyable part of your job?
I just love coming up with the stupidest jokes imaginable. Life can be relentlessly depressing, so I enjoy my small part in bringing levity to people.
What’s the most challenging part of your job?
My job is constantly juggling notes, deadlines and meetings. As a freelance comedy writer, I have to switch the audience in my head constantly and shape my tone to the tone of the show I’m writing on. I tend to work on between four and eight TV shows at a time, so taking a break among those schedules is very challenging.
How did you get to where you are now?
I’d been doing stand-up since my early teens, even before arriving at Mansfield, so comedy was always the industry I knew I wanted to work in. After University, I spent years doing part-time jobs like working in escape rooms and as a support worker while honing my craft. My now-husband was financially supporting me through all of that. Eventually, I was lucky enough to get a sitcom development deal, an agent and then my first few scriptwriting jobs.
Do you have any stand-out memories of your time at Mansfield that may or may not have influenced where you are now?
I put on a couple of very stupid plays in the Mansfield JCR, one called ‘Father God’ and then a sequel called ‘Father God 2: The Nativity’. It was the Holy Trinity as a family sitcom. Some of my Theology tutors came to see it and didn’t send me down for butchering their educational efforts. Another very fond memory was when I was very kindly given some funding by Mansfield to cover a bit of the cost to study sitcom writing at NYU for the summer. My tutors, Dave Lincicum and Joel Rasmussen, used our next review to pitch their own sitcom ideas to me. Dave’s, memorably, was about a mob boss who has to go undercover as an Oxford Theology tutor. I did write that up as a script, but nobody wanted it!
What’s a professional or personal achievement you are proud of?
My professional achievement I’m possibly most proud of is a Horrible Histories song I wrote which was a Hamilton parody about the Sons of Africa. Meeting the claymation model for Shaun the Sheep was a big day too. Personally, my husband and I completed honour mode of Baldur’s Gate 3. That was huge.
How do you like to spend your free time?
Reading books about beautiful yet strong women who fall in love with fairy princes. I also like to take terrible photos of delicious food at fancy restaurants.
Do you have any life tips for our current students?
If you want to pursue a risky career in the arts, lock yourself down a spouse with a stable job and be charming enough that they’ll financially support you.
Serena Arthur (English, 2016)
What is your current role?
Commissioning Editor at Bonnier Books – I acquire, edit and publish fiction on the Footnote Press and Ithaka Press lists across a range of genres.
How does a typical day unfold for you?
No day is the same as an editor, but most will involve lots of emails, some admin, and several meetings to talk about books. Internally, these can be about everything from a book’s cover, to its marketing and publicity campaign, to where it lines up against other books in the market; externally, they’re often about what kind of books we’re keen to publish.
What’s the most enjoyable part of your job?
Conversations with my colleagues that are basically us all fangirling over books. The same happens with authors, and I love the part of trying to acquire a book where I get to meet the author of a brilliant new novel and convince them that I’m the right editor for their book.
What’s the most challenging part of your job?
Not having more time in the week as we have to juggle a lot at once as publishers and also, more specifically, when a book that we all really loved goes to another publisher instead of us.
How did you get to where you are now?
I did an SYP (Society of Young Publishers) mentorship while I was at Mansfield, and I also co-founded and was Deputy Editor of a student magazine called Onyx which platforms the voices of artists of African and Caribbean heritage, both of which really helped me to get a sense of what publishing might involve. After I graduated, I did some work experience placements at two independent children’s publishers and then, after lots of applications to internships, I got a place on the Hachette Books UK 12-month traineeship in September 2019. I stayed at Hachette in various roles – first as a trainee, then Editorial Assistant, then Editor – until spring 2024 when I moved to my current role.
Do you have any stand-out memories of your time at Mansfield that may or may not have influenced where you are now?
So many centre around the amazing people that I met at Mansfield. From that very first late night creating bibliographies in the Mansfeld Library, I knew I’d met my people and my support group in both work and play (and there were so many amazing Mansfield events for us all to go to). Tutorials, including those with Lucinda and her constant stock of tea, taught me some of the skills that help me in my role now.
What’s a professional or personal achievement you are proud of?
Getting into Oxford, graduating, getting to do my dream job, and now being able to build my own curated list of books. Also, every time I see any of the books I publish connect with readers.
How do you like to spend your free time?
Seeing my friends – many of whom were actually in my English cohort at Mansfield – and taking in different perspectives through film, art and theatre. I’m also a spoken word poet so often go to poetry nights in London.
Do you have any life tips for our current students?
Keep trying – often a no means it isn’t the right fit for you or them, and you’re on your way to something better, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time.
