When I first saw the advert for The TES Research Fellowship, I dismissed it. It would be lovely for somebody, but it was not the sort of thing that happened to me. I talked about it with colleagues, and urged some to apply.

At the time, I was commuting to London, seeking out funding or tendering for short projects on careers guidance. This was highly stressful work that I had done for 10 years.

The difficulty was finding time to think more theoretically and strategically. In order to make time, we had started a reading group for researchers and guidance workers to discuss careers theorists. However, none of those seemed to be starting from the same place as us.

Their models were neat and agreeable, but bore no relation to the complex and sometimes haphazard way in which our clients, and we ourselves, generally made careers choices. We took decisions often quite subliminally, over time, and by relying on stereotypes picked up unwittingly.

As the February deadline for applications came closer, I changed my mind. I realised that I would like a year to think again more systematically about those theorists. More importantly, I wanted to look at where we get the stereotypes from and whether there was anything we could do about it. I was sure I wouldn’t get the fellowship, but I knew I would always regret it if I didn’t try.

The hardest part was writing something as short as 1,000 words. I knew why careers and educational choice were as important as the other urgent issues of the day (after all, this was why I had been working in the field). But I had to explain it to people who might not have thought about it before, and say what I planned to do, and keep my credibility in the eyes of people who did know about existing research in the field.

The moral is appropriate to my project theme, career choice: if the opportunity is there, and it attracts you, and your only reason for hesitating is that you think other people will turn you down, then for heaven’s sake try.

My assumptions were unfounded: they did see why it was interesting and important, and offered me this extraordinary year. Since I started, I have kept reassuring myself that I won’t wake up and find myself back on my commuter train. It has been an unfairly beautiful autumn to be in Cambridge, and apart from a few trips to London for research purposes, my longest journey has been by bicycle from college to library.

Lucy Cavendish College is an ideal community for someone returning to academic life after an interruption, and it is particularly ideal for me: almost everyone has had a break with what they originally started to do, or has made a conscious decision to return. It is a small and perfectly formed college. Students feel strongly supported in the wider university community, which contrasts with the feelings of their opposite numbers from the older and larger colleges. I, too, have received real support and encouragement from senior members and the other research fellows.

My research on the impact of the media on career choice has been enormously interesting. The hardest part is in keeping it short, and to something that can be achieved in one year.

There can be little doubt that the media has some influence: the anecdotal evidence from career advisers is overwhelming. The challenge for the year is whether we can understand this more clearly and learn something useful from it.

I have started by breaking down the body of beliefs that affect our career decisions into its different components. The media help to shape our ideas not just about jobs, and how different kinds of work are valued and rewarded, but also about what things can be done by “people like me”. More generally, many of our beliefs about the education and training system, and the economy, and what other people are getting from it, are drawn from the media, both consciously and unconsciously. Perhaps most important of all is the attitude we may be picking up about the extent to which we can change our situation.

I shall be carrying out a small exploratory study of a sample of people who have recently made career-related transitions, both at the beginning of their post-school lives and later on.

I shall ask them in depth about what they felt had influenced them and how the life they are now leading compares with the expectations they had.

In the meantime, I have been looking at three things. First, at the way in which such influences might work. I have been looking at some of the research on the media in relation to violent or other socially problematic behaviour.

My main reasons for looking at this area are to do with models of influence and methodology. But there is, of course, more to it than that: burglary or drug-dealing is just as much a career choice as law or medicine.

Second, I have been looking at the way the media is used intentionally to encourage people to reflect on career and learning possibilities, and then do something about it. I have been talking to broadcasters and civil servants, trying to collect together what I can on the way in which these motivational broadcasts are evaluated.

Third, I have been trying to find out about how careers teachers and advisers have been using the media, not just the videos and programmes made for educational purposes, but more general leisure viewing and listening.

And which media am I talking about? I only have a year: I shall focus on television and radio, but also keep an eye on printed journalism. After all, I know where I got the idea for my latest career move.

Ruth Hawthorn won The TES Research Fellowship at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, for 1995-96 and took up residence in October.