How on EARTH I ended up here…
12 months of Satan Sells already! Time flies when you’re having fun. Since graduating in January, I’ve had a fair bit of time on my hands… and not for lack of trying. When I finished my Masters degree, I (very naively) assumed that the good people of York would be CLAWING at the chance to hire me… Who wouldn’t want to take on someone with a sense of humour drier than the Sahara Desert and a plethora of fun facts about Satanism?! How wrong I was. Like most of my fellow graduates, I’ve been finding the current state of the job market very tough, which in all honesty has really dragged my confidence down the last few months. My ongoing job hunt somewhat clouded my view though; feeling like I was caught up in a storm of rejection emails also made it hard to see the big PhD shaped sun peeking through. I might have faced several “nos” in one department, but I’d also received possibly the most exciting “yes” just months before.
In September, I’ll officially be returning to university to begin my PhD, exploring the Marketing Effect of Satanic Imagery in Heavy Metal Music, which still feels slightly surreal to say (or type?!) out loud. Even more surreal is trying to explain how I actually ended up in this position, because from the outside my academic path probably looks more like someone threw darts at a prospectus and hoped for the best.
A Quick Rewind
At school, the subjects I loved most were always Art, English and History. I spent most of sixth form torn between wanting to pursue something creative (design or journalism) and wanting to disappear into humanities forever. During my A Levels, I ended up writing about the Columbine effect in music and media, which in hindsight probably should have been the first major clue about where my interests were heading. Even then, I was fascinated by moral panic, subcultures, media representation and the way alternative culture gets framed as dangerous or deviant. Even more telling of where I might end up was my A Level Art coursework, which was distinctly… unique to that of my classmates (in that I happed to be the only one looking at the Catholic Church, ghosts, and graveyards… totally normal interests for a 17 year old)
Some of my A Level Artwork
Welcome to York!
Despite that, I ultimately chose to study Law and Criminology at university. Part of me wanted to keep my options broad, but another part of me was still clinging onto a conversation I’d had with my English teacher about forensic linguistics. I liked the idea of keeping one foot in criminology while still studying something more traditionally “stable”, and to be fair, I’m glad I did. Without the criminology side of my degree, I probably never would have explored the sociology of moral panics to the extent that I did, and looking back now, those were the modules were a real game changer for me.
Around the same time, I also started working at Legoland during the summer after finishing my A Levels. As a massive Lego nerd, it genuinely felt like my dream job. What I definitely did not expect was that I’d still be working for Merlin five years later.
During my law degree, travelling home every other weekend to work stopped being remotely cost effective, so I applied for a term-time transfer to the York Dungeon. Through a slightly unexpected contract hiccup, that transfer ended up becoming permanent, meaning I suddenly found myself working at the Dungeon full time and never really got the chance to properly say goodbye to Legoland. Turns out this move would end up changing far more than just my commute to work…
Working at the Dungeon was probably one of the biggest turning points in helping me figure out what I actually wanted to do with my life. The attraction itself sits in a really unique space between theatre, horror, history, tourism and shock marketing. I became obsessed with the way transgressive imagery and humour were being used to attract audiences and create emotional reactions. The more I worked there, the more I realised I was far more interested in cultural experience, audience behaviour and alternative aesthetics than I was in legal practice. I also met my partner, Tom, at The Dungeon… which some might call a match made in… hell?! I joke, I jest, but a Tom still remains the best outcome of my employment history to date.
If I’m being completely honest, by the end of my law degree I knew for sure that I didn’t want to stay in that world long term. I enjoyed parts of it academically, since it was a genuine challenge; but what mattered more was that I never really felt like I’d found my people there. When I came across the Music Management and Marketing Masters course, it felt like everything suddenly started clicked into place.
By that point, my love for heavy metal had grown tenfold thanks to The Fringe, the University of York’s metal and alternative society. Through helping run gigs and events with them, alongside my work in immersive entertainment at the Dungeon, I started realising how much I loved arts management, subcultures and live music spaces. It felt like every weird little interest I’d collected over the years had finally merged into one coherent direction.
Ironically, when I was younger I used to constantly tell people I was going to get a PhD one day. Back then, I imagined myself pursuing forensic pathology (NCIS had a real chokehold on 12 year old Izzy), so this current route is admittedly a bit of a dramatic pivot. Still, it makes for an interesting tale.
Journeys are rarely linear. Mine certainly hasn’t been. Sometimes your interests evolve slowly in the background until eventually you look back and realise all the seemingly random decisions actually were connected after all. Other times, I’ve found that you have to be brave and follow the thing that makes you feel inspired, trusting that the logic will appear later.
I know my path doesn’t make immediate sense to everyone, and honestly, it’s a question I’m pretty bored of trying to answer. Law to heavy metal marketing to Satanism research via Lego and immersive theatre does sound a bit like I generated my career using a random word wheel. But equally, I don’t think I’d change any of it. Two degrees later, every strange and unusual detour ended up teaching me something valuable, and each classroom pushed me a little closer towards understanding what I actually care about.
Some things never change…
Just over 365 days into Satan Sells, I think that’s probably the biggest thing this blog has reinforced too. The subjects that genuinely fascinate you are worth following, even when they seem niche, unconventional or difficult to explain to other people. Sometimes, the weird little interests you’ve carried around for years end up becoming the foundation for far more exciting, and in the grand scheme of things… that’s what matters a whole lot more than a few silly rejection emails.
