Exams finished, wondering what’s next

I don’t have any particular questions or insights to share here, just thought I’d post my experience and see if anyone else can relate. This week I got the news that I’ve passed my final FE-1 exam. I feel like I should be happy, and I am, but at the same time I’m uncertain and anxious about what’s next.

Truth be told, passing the exams took a lot longer than I planned. After graduation my original modest plan was to do them all in three sittings, 3 then 3 then 2. After failing one of my first 3 exams, I decided 2 at a time might be more reasonable, and passed the next two the following sitting. The next sitting I passed the first, but left the studying far too late for the second and didn’t even try it. The sitting after that, I failed them both. That was a real low point. After that, I passed the remaining three one sitting at a time while working.

So here I am, three years after starting the exams, after seven sittings and three fails, the FE1s are finally behind me. Yet I still feel like a training contract is far away. Almost all of firms I’ve applied to (I applied for 20 or so traineeships this round) have already sent back emails starting with “unfortunately”. I’ve been struggling to find work even as a legal exec or secretary. I have some experience, about seven months working in temporary admin roles at law firms, but a lot of places look for 3 years experience even just for secretarial jobs. Since finishing up at my last job I’ve really eaten into my savings and now I’ve no choice but to sign on to the dole and I feel humiliated.

I know I’ve slowly made progress, but at this point after graduation I imagined I’d already have my training contract secured, and it depresses me that I don’t. I’m concerned that I missed the boat as far as traineeships are concerned, and I’m not sure what to do. Right now the hope is that if I can finally find another legal job for the new year, stick at it for a while and then finally I’ll be successful in the next milk rounds, but I’m also giving a lot of thought to doing a Masters Degree next year in the hopes it will help me stand out in the job field.

How have you all been doing in your career journey, particularly those of you who didn’t graduate college with a TC already secured?