I have no clue what I want to do after university, and it feels like everyone else does. It’s hard to navigate these years when the end goal isn’t in sight, so last week, my hunt for career inspiration led me to attend a talk with Dame Anne Pringle, the Chancellor of St Andrews University and former British Ambassador to the Czech Republic and Russia. Whilst my motive to attend this talk was genuinely just for an insight into her eye-catching career in diplomacy, I left the room with a lot more life advice than I’d originally anticipated. Dame Anne’s talk stood as a welcome reminder that career paths are often not linear, and they can be all the better because of it.
A former St Andrews student herself, Anne Pringle graduated with a degree in French and German in 1977. I found it refreshing to hear that Dame Anne had no clue what she wanted to do with her life at this stage. After facing a few job rejections, it was only once she secured a position within the Foreign Office that her career path started to take its shape. With her background in languages, Dame Anne told us she believes this skill is one of the best ways to ‘get under the skin of other cultures’ and that it ultimately elevated her career in diplomacy.
Her success wasn’t always so smooth sailing, though. At the beginning of her career in the Foreign Office there were virtually no female role models, and she initially struggled to make her voice heard, often facing push-back against her ideas. She drew some laughter from the room as she painted the scene with some real statements from senior male ambassadors at the time:
‘To put it bluntly, the clever woman would not be liked, and the attractive woman would not be taken seriously.’
So, you couldn’t be too smart, and you couldn’t be too pretty, so your career in diplomacy was probably doomed to failure. Whilst this attitude is literally laughable now, it was a very real obstacle for Dame Anne as she was trying to make a name for herself. Men in the field held fixed prejudices about women, regardless of how talented they were.
So how did she deal with it?
Her advice was simply to never lower yourself to other people’s prejudices and expectations. People can talk over you, but it doesn’t mean they know more than you. Their opinions shouldn’t colour your own personal ambitions and expectations.
‘The loudest voices are not necessarily the smartest’
Dame Anne climbed the career ladder within the Foreign Office, eventually landing herself the role of British Ambassador to Russia, the first woman to hold the post in its 450-year history. It was a rewarding role that put her right at the heart of a time of political change, but it came with its own challenges.
Her take on this? One of the best ways we can develop confidence is to take on difficult roles and grow into them. Life, she said, isn’t all about being ‘super’. It’s about making mistakes, dusting yourself down, telling yourself, ‘I can do this’, and carrying on. Once she got that, she admitted, she was ‘unstoppable’.
Something that stood out to me about Dame Anne was how much importance she placed on believing in herself. During her career in the Foreign Office, attempts at intimidation were not uncommon, but she used this self-belief to face them head-on.
On a train from Prague to Moscow as a young professional, Dame Anne was pulled out at the border, taken to a small hut, and grilled (in Russian) for hours about whether she had the right documents. She didn’t budge. Her self-belief and determination carried her through these negotiations, until they finally let her back on the train. This attitude shone through even in her casual recounting of this far–from-casual situation. She knew her own mind even then, and she isn’t someone who will let others back her into a corner.
The topic of our current, somewhat bleak, job market soon came up. However, Dame Anne pointed out that when she graduated in 1977, the very same fears were circling students. Her outlook was optimistic: whilst we now face the added competition of AI, she argued that human skills matter more than ever. AI can’t make critical judgements the way humans do, and it can’t build the relationships that are at the core of diplomacy.
She added that judgement, listening, empathy, and curiosity about other people’s cultures are still critical human traits. It’s easy to empathise with people who share your background, she said, but the real challenge is finding common ground with those who might not share the same political views or cultures.
Dame Anne’s career wasn’t one that she envisioned during her days at St Andrews. Whilst some of her friends took routes that led to a higher paycheck, she insists that in the long run, her own path was far more enriching because it interested and challenged her. She insists that you shouldn’t settle for a job you don’t love, because if you don’t love it, you’re ultimately not going to be great at it.
I left Dame Anne’s talk with a spring in my step.
University is challenging, change is hard to navigate, and the future is quite frankly terrifying, but it’s also exciting. Anne Pringle’s career stands as an important reminder that we don’t need to have our lives mapped out from the moment we graduate. Jobs will take us in unexpected directions, and being able to roll with it is what will drive our success.
Trust yourself and stay determined. Whilst you might not know what you want to do after graduation, if you know who you are at your core then a path, be it linear or not, will emerge eventually.