- Lily Allen: Sometimes I'm ashamed of not having studied.
British singer Lily Allen ("Smile") struggles with her brief school career. "When people start talking about where they studied and all that, I get into this self-hatred spiral because I didn't go to university," the 39-year-old said on her podcast "Miss Me?"
She herself left school at 15 and didn't even have a General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), explained the singer. The GCSE exam corresponds to the intermediate school leaving certificate in Germany. Allen said, "I have no qualifications, and I'm ashamed of that."
When asked by her co-host what a higher education degree would change for her now, Allen said she might have turned her back on music. "I might have thought, 'I'm actually going to become a lawyer.'"
After suffering a stillbirth in 2010, she wanted to become a midwife, "because that was something that really interested me." But without the intermediate school leaving certificate, she found the path to this profession too difficult.
Despite her struggles with self-hatred due to not attending university, Lily Allen expressed a potential interest in becoming a lawyer if she had obtained a higher education degree. Being interested in midwifery after her stillbirth, Allen regretted that her lack of General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) made the path to this profession too challenging, hindering her aspirations in the medical field, ultimately belonging to The United Kingdom's education system.
