I dreamed of working in the City but couldn't read or write – I got a job most people never think of & now drive a Tesla
Nicole Collings, from the UK, took to social media to share her story and how she bagged her dream job despite not knowing how to read or write.
3
3
3
The mum said: "When I started my first job in London in the city I couldn't read or write."
Nicole said she struggled with learning growing up but her mum always reassured her that she had 'good looks and common sense' which would get her far.
She added: "She'd say, 'As long as you keep your wits about you Nic, and you always look the part, you'll be fine, you'll be fine, don't worry about it.'"
Nicole said she never really improved her reading or writing skills and 'winged it' her whole life.
But Nicole was determined to work and earn money so decided to work as a waitress despite dreams of working in the City of London.
Determined to change her life, she went into her mum's back room and used the computer to create a CV that was 'really badly spelled.'
With her CV in tow, Nicole got the train to Canary Wharf, bought herself a new outfit and leather handbag and started handing out her CV.
"And there was me, walking around like I really knew what I was doing, but I didn't have a clue," she explained.
She ended up in a recruitment agency and sat down with the branch manager as he went through her CV.
"He was a bit bewildered. He couldn't actually believe the confidence that I had matching with the CV that looked like a five-year-old had made it," she explained.
She was then asked to do a test, but she was honest with the manager and said she wouldn't pass while letting him know she was good on the phone and was happy to learn on the go.
By the time she got to the station, he had called and offered her a job.
"And that is how I started working in the city with literally not being able to read or write," she explained.
"Basically the moral of the story is don't worry about what you haven't got. You are unique and you have got something. So fake it until you make it."
Now Nicole is able to afford a 2023 Tesla worth £35,000 and goes on lavish holidays each year.
The clip went viral on her TikTok account @ nicoleisthisme with over 97k views and 7,000 likes.
People were quick to praise Nicole in the comments.
One person wrote: "Do you know what, you should be so incredibly proud of yourself! Truly."
Another commented: "I love your confidence, you haven't just got where you are because you are pretty, you have a great personality and come across as a very lovable person."
"Honey, intelligence isn't all about academia, it comes in all forms. Well done for all of your achievements," penned a third.
Meanwhile a fourth said: "Well done. You should be super proud of yourself! Great video!"
Someone else added: "This is so inspiring."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
Lottery results LIVE: National Lottery Set For Life draw tonight, August 7, 2025
THE National Lottery Set For Life numbers are in and it's time to find out if you've won the top prize of £10,000 every month for 30 years. Could tonight's jackpot see you start ticking off that bucket list every month or building your own start-up as a budding entrepreneur? 1 You can find out by checking your ticket against tonight's numbers below. Good luck! The winning Set For Life numbers are: 03, 11, 17, 18, 23 and the Life Ball is 06. The first National Lottery draw was held on November 19 1994 when seven winners shared a jackpot of £5,874,778. The largest amount ever to be won by a single ticket holder was £42million, won in 1996. Gareth Bull, a 49-year-old builder, won £41million in November, 2020 and ended up knocking down his bungalow to make way for a luxury manor house with a pool. £1.308 billion (Powerball) on January 13 2016 in the US, for which three winning tickets were sold, remains history's biggest lottery prize £1.267 billion (Mega Million) a winner from South Carolina took their time to come forward to claim their prize in March 2019 not long before the April deadline £633.76 million (Powerball draw) from a winner from Wisconsin £625.76 million (Powerball) Mavis L. Wanczyk of Chicopee, Massachusetts claimed the jackpot in August 2017 £575.53 million (Powerball) A lucky pair of winners scooped the jackpot in Iowa and New York in October 2018 Sue Davies, 64, bought a lottery ticket to celebrate ending five months of shielding during the pandemic — and won £500,000. Sandra Devine, 36, accidentally won £300k - she intended to buy her usual £100 National Lottery Scratchcard, but came home with a much bigger prize. The biggest jackpot ever to be up for grabs was £66million in January last year, which was won by two lucky ticket holders. Another winner, Karl managed to bag £11million aged just 23 in 1996. The odds of winning the lottery are estimated to be about one in 14million - BUT you've got to be in it to win it.
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
‘God exists whether you have doubts or not': Five religious leaders on Kemi Badenoch's crisis of faith
At one stage in her life, Kemi Badenoch believed in God. 'I would have defined myself as a Christian apologist, always arguing with people about why there was a God,' she told the BBC on Thursday. But then news of Josef Fritzl, who'd locked his daughter in a cellar for 24 years, broke. 'That killed it', said Badenoch. It's a story familiar to religious leaders across the country, who are often asked how God can exist and still allow evil and awful personal tragedy to take place. Indeed, vicars, priests, rabbis and imams often experience their own trials, which can be all the more tortuous given their responsibility to project confidence and stability in the face of adversity. Here, five religious leaders describe how they address doubts that are raised with them about the existence of God, even in cases where they have privately wrestled with similar concerns. 'I don't have the answer' Yitzchak Schochet, 60, rabbi of Mill Hill Synagogue, north London At the beginning of April, there was a crazy car accident that happened in New York. A car jumped a kerb on Saturday morning when a mother and her daughters were walking home from synagogue, killing her and two of the children. I flew to the funeral in Israel, and I will never forget how, in the midst of it all, the grandfather who lost his daughter and two granddaughters yelled out to me, 'Rabbi. Why does God allow this to happen?' All I could do in that moment was give him a hug. I wasn't there to even attempt an answer, because I don't have the answer, and I have to be honest enough to know that. I know that there are things that are well beyond human comprehension. To believe in God means that you believe there are things that are beyond your own understanding. But the inevitable tension is always going to be there: knowing that I will not be able to provide the answer for the question that they're asking, but at the same time, wanting to encourage them to hold on to their faith, because that's the only thing that will walk them through whatever turmoil they're undergoing. 'I'm not some kind of saviour figure' Fr Ben Bell, 50, rector of St George the Martyr, south London My church is on Borough High Street. It's really busy, just down the road from London Bridge. We've got Guy's Hospital around the corner from us so it's not uncommon for people to come into the church on their way to an appointment. They come in with all sorts of crises: relationships, work-related, homelessness. Sometimes people come and ask: 'Am I cursed?' And I can give some concrete answers to that and say, 'No, I don't believe that is the case.' But very often, my role is to be an accommodating presence for people who are going through the s--- of life. We can all be tempted, from time to time, to think that we might be able to help. I'm not some kind of saviour figure, so that's not my business. I'm also a human who is a representative of the church. The place of the church is to hold people, or to provide a space for people who are wrestling with these questions: that is exactly what the church exists for, not for people who are full of certainty. As vicars, we're certainly not superheroes, we're certainly not fixers. We're certainly not spiritual paramedics. Our role is of accompaniment and prayer. Doubt and questioning how faith breathes are all part of this thing we call 'faith'. One of the great curses of modernity is that it's taught us that faith is an individual activity, and is all about certainty. I think that faith is communal and about mystery. It's not about certainty. And I think that we've been betrayed by modernist thinking in that respect. 'My son died on his honeymoon, but I don't believe it was the will of God' Rabbi Jonathan Romain, 70, Convener of Reform Judaism's Beit Din One of my sons drowned on his honeymoon two years ago: it was devastating for me, but it was not the will of God or part of some unfathomable divine plan, but sheer bad luck. Being religious means not being derailed by it and still living life to the full. People like to have a reason for why things happen. Why did my son drown? Why did my father die of cancer? Why did my wife get killed in a car accident? Sometimes there is no good explanation. People don't like question marks, they like answers. They much prefer to have an exclamation mark to a question mark. But Judaism is very much about saying life happens, bad things happen, but let's try and make a positive change. The trouble is that sometimes there's a difference between a person's emotional response and their intellectual response. Intellectually, a lot of people will say, 'You're right: my wife's cancer was just just bad luck', but emotionally they still feel there ought to be a reason. My message is: that's not always possible, but what is possible is change. So go out and do something positive for change in your wife's memory. 'My own faith is challenged' Glynn Harrison, 75, former diocesan lay minister, Christian speaker and retired psychiatrist I've wrestled with many of the same doubts and questions that Kemi talks about. You can't be a follower of Christ and not be sensitive to suffering. But I'm now much more comfortable with the fact that not knowing the answer to something doesn't mean an answer doesn't exist. And that's the way I cope with this question of suffering and the violent clash there is between the realities of the world and the conviction that God is good. I see the terrible toll of mental illness on some people and that really challenges my own faith, because you are watching a disintegration of the self at the most profound level of who we are. That's really hard, but even so, I come back to this idea that I think I can trust that God is good. Everything else about my faith tells me that God is good. We may not know the answer, but if he's good, there's reason for trusting him. I can think of a man who could not accept the tragic death of his wife and it finished his faith. At that point, you don't come in with arguments. You sit with them. It's a time for showing the love of God rather than talking about it. Being present, listening, supporting and grieving with the person. Later, after they've seen love in action, there's the opportunity to ask where this love comes from. Does it come from blind, material forces in a cruel universe? Or, does it come from the reality that we bear the image of God himself, and therefore from him who's the author of love? 'Doubt comes from my emotional reaction to something' Fergus Butler-Gallie, 30, vicar of Charlbury with Shorthampton, Oxfordshire I don't think anyone is immune to doubt, but I think there's an arrogance to think that my doubts matter. I think God exists, whether I doubt him or not, and doubt almost certainly comes from my emotional reaction to something rather than what's actually the case. That's my attitude to my own doubts. And then, invariably, something happens to reaffirm things and makes me realise how silly those doubts are. I don't really take them intellectually seriously, I view them as an emotional response, because God is there whether I like it or not. And one morning I might not like it, but that doesn't change it from being the case.
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Soaring numbers of children skipping classes risks leaving 180,000 youngsters on the jobs scrapheap, think tank warns
Almost 180,000 pupils are set for a life of unemployment due to 'troubling' school absence rates, a think tank has warned. The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) said that, without intervention, the high rates of children bunking off school will translate into joblessness. It said the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training (Neet) is set to rise as a result. The latest data from the Department for Education (DfE) shows that the number of children missing at least half of school time – defined as 'severely absent' – has risen. A total of 147,605 children — 2.04 per cent of pupils — missed at least half of school sessions in autumn 2024, up from 1.97 per cent a year earlier. Although this remains below the record high of 172,938 in the summer of 2023, the CSJ said 'the trend remains on an alarmingly upwards trajectory'. The think tank found that children who received free school meals were nearly four times more likely than their peers to be severely absent. Meanwhile those with special educational needs were seven times more likely. Beth Prescott, the education lead at the CSJ, said: 'Five years on from school closures, classroom absences can no longer be viewed as a post-pandemic blip. 'The material risk now is that this issue is becoming deeply entrenched. 'It is sending a wave of harm through our economy, driving more young people towards a life of wasted potential and benefit dependency.' She said the Government should help local charities to provide mentors to help children attend school. But she added: 'With the crisis deepening, we need to attack the root causes of school absence, including softening parental attitudes to attendance and an education system that fails to engage thousands of young people.' The CSJ conducted modelling based on previous studies which suggested there could be 175,000 Neet 16-18 year olds due to absence between 2024/25 and 2028/29. However, the DfE pointed out that other measures of absence painted a rosier picture. The latest data shows overall absence rate dropped from 6.69 per cent to 6.38 per cent, meaning that on average six out of every 100 pupils were off on a typical school day. Persistent absence, defined as missing at least 10 per cent of sessions, or a day per fortnight, fell from 19.4 per cent to 17.8 per cent. This equates to 1.28 million children, down from 1.41 million the year before, although the figure remains 40 per cent higher than in autumn 2019. A DfE spokesperson said: 'We inherited a broken school system so we are taking decisive action through our plan for change to tackle the attendance crisis — and the latest data shows positive green shoots, with the biggest year-on-year improvement in attendance in a decade. 'We are making huge progress, with over five million more days in school this year and 140,000 fewer pupils persistently absent, which research shows in time is likely to improve severe absence. 'We know there is more to do, which is why we are rolling out free breakfast clubs, improving mental health support, ensuring earlier intervention for children with special educational needs and will set out our vision for the school system in the white paper later this year.'
