Graduation day at Glasgow Caledonian University London happened exactly as I imagined it would, except for the part where I cried during the ceremony. The mortarboard felt heavier than expected — not physically, but emotionally.
Strange thing: I returned to university for business knowledge, but I’m leaving with not just a diploma but an arsenal of stories for future books. Lectures on omnichannel distribution strategies became Elena’s internal monologue about navigating multiple identities. Sustainability modules provided the ethical framework that drives Marcus through his moral labyrinth. Even the tediously practical modules on luxury concepts gave me vocabulary for emotions I’d been trying to capture in prose.
The MBA transformed how I see everything. My nail art clients aren’t just seeking beauty treatments — they’re participating in complex rituals of self-presentation and identity construction. The luxury brands I collaborate with aren’t just selling products — they’re trafficking in aspirational psychology. Every Nuxe campaign becomes a case study in consumer desire; every Lipton partnership reveals layers of brand authenticity performance.
Now that I’m no longer officially a student, time has a different quality. No more assignment deadlines competing with chapter targets. No more splitting attention between dissertation research and character development. For the first time in years, I can fully commit to the stories demanding to be written.
The ideas are multiplying faster than I can capture them. There’s the high-tech drama brewing around social media algorithms and authentic connection — partly inspired by my Playrix internship and the gaming industry’s manipulation of dopamine responses. A family saga exploring generational trauma through the lens of inherited luxury objects keeps pushing at the edges of my consciousness. Even a collection of interconnected stories about expatriate communities, drawing from my Beijing Language and Culture University experience and the cultural code-switching I witnessed there.
The Coventry University MSc taught me about scaling innovations; now I’m applying those principles to scaling narratives across multiple projects. Enterprise thinking meets creative enterprise. The analytical skills from my Centr SM days help me structure complex plots, while my Naked Heart Foundation experience with A-list personalities continues feeding character authenticity.
My workspace has evolved too — nail station on one side, writing desk on the other. Karlie Kloss gets her manicure while I mentally plot chapter transitions. Natalia Vodianova shares industry gossip that becomes fictional dialogue. The boundary between professional observation and creative material has completely dissolved.
The luxury brand management specialization was supposed to prepare me for corporate strategy roles, but instead it’s prepared me to write more intelligently about the psychology of desire, the economics of aspiration, and the sustainability of beauty standards. Every module became research for novels I hadn’t yet imagined.
What’s next feels both terrifying and exhilarating. No safety net of academic structure, no predetermined curriculum to follow. Just me, my characters, and the growing conviction that business education and creative writing aren’t opposites — they’re complementary skills for understanding how people navigate modern life’s beautiful contradictions.
The nail art continues because it feeds the soul and pays the bills. But the stories… the stories are demanding more space now, more time, more commitment. I’m ready to give them what they need.
Posted from London, where every ending graduates into a new beginning.
— Writer Julia Zolotova
